LIBERTY  AND 
THE   NEWS 


WALTER    LIPPMANN 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY- 0T 

SAN  DIEGO 


LIBERTY  AND  THE  NEWS 


BY  WALTER  LIPPMANN 

THE  POEMS  OF  PAUL  MARIETT. 
Edited  with  an  Introduction. 

A  PREFACE  TO  POLITICS. 
DRIFT  AND  MASTERY. 
THE  STAKES  OF  DIPLOMACY. 

THE  POLITICAL  SCENE:  An  Essay 
on  the  Victory  of  1918. 


LIBERTY  and  the  NEWS 


NEW  YORK 

HARCOURT,  BRACE  AND  HOWE 
1920 


COPYRIGHT,    1919,    BY 
THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT,  1920,  BY 
HARCOURT,   BRACE  AND  HOWE,   INC. 


In  writing  this  tract  I  have  dared 
to  believe  that  many  things  were  pos- 
sible because  of  the  personal  example 
offered  to  all  who  practice  journalism 
by  Mr.  C.  P.  Scott,  for  over  forty-five 
years  editor-in-chief  of  the  Manchester 
Guardian.  In  the  light  of  his  career  it 
cannot  seem  absurd  or  remote  to  think 
of  freedom  and  truth  in  relation  to  the 
news. 

Two  of  the  essays  in  this  volume,  "What 
Modern  Liberty  Means"  and  "Liberty 
and  the  News"  were  published  originally 
in  the  Atlantic  Monthly.  I  wish  to  thank 
Mr.  Ellery  Sedgwick  for  the  encourag- 
ment  he  gave  me  while  writing  them, 
and  for  permission  to  reprint  them  in 
this  volume. 

W.  L. 

New  York  City. 
January  i,  1920. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

JOURNALISM  AND  THE  HIGHER  LAW  .  .  3 
WHAT  MODERN  LIBERTY  MEANS  ...  19 
LIBERTY  AND  THE  NEWS  ......  69 


vii 


LIBERTY  AND  THE  NEWS 


JOURNALISM   AND  THE 
HIGHER   LAW 

VOLUME  i,  Number  i,  of  the  first 
American  newspaper  was  pub- 
lished in  Boston  on  September  25,  1690. 
It  was  called  Publick  Occurrences.  The 
second  issue  did  not  appear  because  the 
Governor  and  Council  suppressed  it. 
They  found  that  Benjamin  Harris,  the 
editor,  had  printed  "reflections  of  a  very 
high  nature."  *  Even  to-day  some  of  his 
reflections  seem  very  high  indeed.  In 
his  prospectus  he  had  written: 

"That  something  may  be  done  toward  the 
Curing,  or  at  least  the  Charming  of  that 
Spirit  of  Lying,  which  prevails  amongst  us, 
wherefore  nothing  shall  be  entered,  but  what 

1  "History    of    American    Journalism,"    James    Melvin 
Lee,  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  1917,  p.  10. 


Liberty  and  the  News 

we  have  reason  to  believe  is  true,  repairing 
to  the  best  fountains  for  our  Information. 
And  when  there  appears  any  material  mis- 
take in  anything  that  is  collected,  it  shall  be 
corrected  in  the  next.  Moreover,  the  Pub- 
lisher of  these  Occurrences  is  willing  to  en- 
gage, that  whereas,  there  are  many  False 
Reports,  maliciously  made,  and  spread 
among  us,  if  any  well-minded  person  will  be 
at  the  pains  to  trace  any  such  false  Report, 
so  far  as  to  find  out  and  Convict  the  First 
Raiser  of  it,  he  will  in  this  Paper  (unless 
just  Advice  be  given  to  the  contrary)  ex- 
pose the  Name  of  such  Person,  as  A  ma- 
licious Raiser  of  a  false  Report.  It  is  sup- 
pos'd  that  none  will  dislike  this  Proposal, 
but  such  as  intend  to  be  guilty  of  so  villainous 
a  Crime." 

Everywhere  to-day  men  are  conscious 
that  somehow  they  must  deal  with  ques- 
tions more  intricate  than  any  that  church 
or  school  had  prepared  them  to  under- 
stand. Increasingly  they  know  that  they 
cannot  understand  them  if  the  facts  are 
4 


Journalism  and  the  Higher  Law 

not  quickly  and  steadily  available.  In- 
creasingly they  are  baffled  because  the 
facts  are  not  available;  and  they  are  won- 
dering whether  government  by  consent 
can  survive  in  a  time  when  the  manu- 
facture of  consent  is  an  unregulated  pri- 
vate enterprise.  For  in  an  exact  sense 
the  present  crisis  of  western  democracy 
is  a  crisis  in  journalism. 

I  do  not  agree  with  those  who  think 
that  the  sole  cause  is  corruption.  There 
is  plenty  of  corruption,  to  be  sure, 
moneyed  control,  caste  pressure,  finan- 
cial and  social  bribery,  ribbons,  dinner 
parties,  clubs,  petty  politics.  The  specu- 
lators in  Russian  rubles  who  lied  on  the 
Paris  Bourse  about  the  capture  of  Petro- 
grad  are  not  the  only  example  of  their 
species.  And  yet  corruption  does  not  ex- 
plain the  condition  of  modern  journal- 
ism. 

Mr.  Franklin  P.  Adams  wrote  re- 
5 


Liberty  and  the  News 

cently:  "Now  there  is  much  pettiness — 
and  almost  incredible  stupidity  and  ig- 
norance— in  the  so-called  free  press;  but 
it  is  the  pettiness,  etc.,  common  to  the 
so-called  human  race — a  pettiness  found 
in  musicians,  steamfitters,  landlords, 
poets,  and  waiters.  And  when  Miss 
Lowell  [who  had  made  the  usual  aris- 
tocratic complaint]  speaks  of  the  incur- 
able desire  in  all  American  newspapers 
to  make  fun  of  everything  in  season  and 
out,  we  quarrel  again.  There  is  an  in- 
curable desire  in  American  newspapers 
to  take  things  much  more  seriously  than 
they  deserve.  Does  Miss  Lowell  read 
the  ponderous  news  from  Washington? 
Does  she  read  the  society  news?  Does 
she,  we  wonder,  read  the  newspapers?" 

Mr.  Adams  does  read  them,  and  when 

he  writes  that  the  newspapers  take  things 

much  more  seriously  than  they  deserve, 

he  has,  as  the  mayor's  wife  remarked  to 

6 


Journalism  and  the  Higher  Law 

the  queen,  said  a  mouthful.  Since  the 
war,  especially,  editors  have  come  to  be- 
lieve that  their  highest  duty  is  not  to  re- 
port but  to  instruct,  not  to  print  news  but 
to  save  civilization,  not  to  publish  what 
Benjamin  Harris  calls  "the  Circum- 
stances of  Publique  Affairs,  both  abroad 
and  at  home,"  but  to  keep  the  nation  on 
the  straight  and  narrow  path.  Like  the 
Kings  of  England,  they  have  elected 
themselves  Defenders  of  the  Faith.  "For 
five  years,"  says  Mr.  Cobb  of  the  New 
York  World,  "there  has  been  no  free 
play  of  public  opinion  in  the  world. 
Confronted  by  the  inexorable  necessities 
of  war,  governments  conscripted  public 
opinion.  .  .  .  They  goose-stepped  it. 
They  taught  it  to  stand  at  attention  and 
salute.  ...  It  sometimes  seems  that  after 
the  armistice  was  signed,  millions  of 
Americans  must  have  taken  a  vow  that 
they  would  never  again  do  any  thinking 
7 


Liberty  and  the  News 

for  themselves.  They  were  willing  to 
die  for  their  country,  but  not  willing  to 
think  for  it."  That  minority,  which  is 
proudly  prepared  to  think  for  it,  and 
not  only  prepared,  but  cocksure  that  it 
alone  knows  how  to  think  for  it,  has 
adopted  the  theory  that  the  public  should 
know  what  is  good  for  it. 

The  work  of  reporters  has  thus  be- 
come confused  with  the  work  of  preach- 
ers, revivalists,  prophets  and  agitators. 
The  current  theory  of  American  news- 
paperdom  is  that  an  abstraction  like  the 
truth  and  a  grace  like  fairness  must  be 
sacrificed  whenever  anyone  thinks  the 
necessities  of  civilization  require  the  sac- 
rifice. To  Archbishop  Whately's  dictum 
that  it  matters  greatly  whether  you  put 
truth  in  the  first  place  or  the  second,  the 
candid  expounder  of  modern  journalism 
would  reply  that  he  put  truth  second  to 
what  he  conceived  to  be  the  national  in- 
8 


Journalism  and  the  Higher  Law 

terest.  Judged  simply  by  their  product, 
men  like  Mr.  Ochs  or  Viscount  North- 
cliffe  believe  that  their  respective  na- 
tions will  perish  and  civilization  decay 
unless  their  idea  of  what  is  patriotic  is 
permitted  to  temper  the  curiosity  of  their 
readers. 

They  believe  that  edification  is  more 
important  than  veracity.  They  believe 
it  profoundly,  violently,  relentlessly. 
They  preen  themselves  upon  it.  To  pa- 
triotism, as  they  define  it  from  day  to 
day,  all  other  considerations  must  yield. 
That  is  their  pride.  And  yet  what  is 
this  but  one  more  among  myriad  ex- 
amples of  the  doctrine  that  the  end  justi- 
fies the  means.  A  more  insidiously  mis- 
leading rule  of  conduct  was,  I  believe, 
never  devised  among  men.  It  was  a 
plausible  rule  as  long  as  men  believed 
that  an  omniscient  and  benevolent  Provi- 
dence taught  them  what  end  to  seek. 
9 


Liberty  and  the  News 

But  now  that  men  are  critically  aware 
of  how  their  purposes  are  special  to  their 
age,  their  locality,  their  interests,  and 
their  limited  knowledge,  it  is  blazing  ar- 
rogance to  sacrifice  hard-won  standards 
of  credibility  to  some  special  purpose.  It 
is  nothing  but  the  doctrine  that  I  want 
what  I  want  when  I  want  it.  Its  monu- 
ments are  the  Inquisition  and  the  inva- 
sion of  Belgium.  It  is  the  reason  given 
for  almost  every  act  of  unreason,  the  law 
invoked  whenever  lawlessness  justifies  it- 
self. At  bottom  it  is  nothing  but  the 
anarchical  nature  of  man  imperiously 
hacking  its  way  through. 

Just  as  the  most  poisonous  form  of 
disorder  is  the  mob  incited  from  high 
places,  the  most  immoral  act  the  immo- 
rality of  a  government,  so  the  most  de- 
structive form  of  untruth  is  sophistry 
and  propaganda  by  those  whose  profes- 
sion it  is  to  report  the  news.  The  news 
10 


Journalism  and  the  Higher  Law 

columns  are  common  carriers.  When 
those  who  control  them  arrogate  to  them- 
selves the  right  to  determine  by  their 
own  consciences  what  shall  be  reported 
and  for  what  purpose,  democracy  is  un- 
workable. Public  opinion  is  blockaded. 
For  when  a  people  can  no  longer  confi- 
dently repair  'to  the  best  fountains  for 
their  information,'  then  anyone's  guess 
and  anyone's  rumor,  each  man's  hope  and 
each  man's  whim  becomes  the  basis  of 
government.  All  that  the  sharpest  critics 
of  democracy  have  alleged  is  true,  if 
there  is  no  steady  supply  of  trustworthy 
and  relevant  news.  Incompetence  and 
aimlessness,  corruption  and  disloyalty, 
panic  and  ultimate  disaster,  must  come 
to  any  people  which  is  denied  an  assured 
access  to  the  facts.  No  one  can  manage 
anything  on  pap.  Neither  can  a  people. 
Statesmen  may  devise  policies;  they 
will  end  in  futility,  as  so  many  have  re- 
ii 


Liberty  and  the  News 

cently  ended,  if  the  propagandists  and 
censors  can  put  a  painted  screen  where 
there  should  be  a  window  to  the  world. 
Few  episodes  in  recent  history  are  more 
poignant  than  that  of  the  British  Prime 
Minister,  sitting  at  the  breakfast  table 
with  that  morning's  paper  before  him 
protesting  that  he  cannot  do  the  sensible 
thing  in  regard  to  Russia  because  a  pow- 
erful newspaper  proprietor  has  drugged 
the  public.  That  incident  is  a  photo- 
graph of  the  supreme  danger  which  con- 
fronts popular  government.  All  other 
dangers  are  contingent  upon  it,  for  the 
news  is  the  chief  source  of  the  opinion 
by  which  government  now  proceeds.  So 
long  as  there  is  interposed  between  the 
ordinary  citizen  and  the  facts  a  news  or- 
ganization determining  by  entirely  pri- 
vate and  unexamined  standards,  no  mat- 
ter how  lofty,  what  he  shall  know,  and 
hence  what  he  shall  believe,  no  one  will 

12 


Journalism  and  the  Higher  Law 

be  able  to  say  that  the  substance  of 
democratic  government  is  secure.  The 
theory  of  our  constitution,  says  Mr.  Jus- 
tice Holmes,  is  that  truth  is  the  only 
ground  upon  which  men's  wishes  safely 
can  be  carried  out.1  In  so  far  as  those 
who  purvey  the  news  make  of  their  own 
beliefs  a  higher  law  than  truth,  they  are 
attacking  the  foundations  of  our  consti- 
tutional system.  There  can  be  no  higher 
law  in  journalism  than  to  tell  the  truth 
and  shame  the  devil. 

That  I  have  few  illusions  as  to  the 
difficulty  of  truthful  reporting  anyone 
can  see  who  reads  these  pages.  If  truth- 
fulness were  simply  a  matter  of  sincerity 
the  future  would  be  rather  simple.  But 
the  modern  news  problem  is  not  solely  a 
question  of  the  newspaperman's  morals. 
It  is,  as  I  have  tried  to  show  in  what  fol- 

1  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  No.  316,  October 
term,  1919,  Jacob  Abrams  et  al.,  Plaintiffs  in  Error  vs. 
the  United  States. 

13 


Liberty  and  the  News 

lows,  the  intricate  result  of  a  civiliza- 
tion too  extensive  for  any  man's  personal 
observation.  As  the  problem  is  mani- 
fold, so  must  be  the  remedy.  There  is 
no  panacea.  But  however  puzzling  the 
matter  may  be,  there  are  some  things 
that  anyone  may  assert  about  it,  and  as- 
sert without  fear  of  contradiction.  They 
are  that  there  is  a  problem  of  the  news 
which  is  of  absolutely  basic  importance 
to  the  survival  of  popular  government, 
and  that  the  importance  of  that  problem 
is  not  vividly  realized  nor  sufficiently 
considered. 

In  a  few  generations  it  will  seem  lu- 
dicrous to  historians  that  a  people  pro- 
fessing government  by  the  will  of  the 
people  should  have  made  no  serious  ef- 
fort to  guarantee  the  news  without  which 
a  governing  opinion  cannot  exist.  "Is  it 
possible,"  they  will  ask,  "that  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Twentieth  Century  na- 
«4 


Journalism  and  the  Higher  Law 

tions     calling    themselves     democracies 
were  content  to  act  on  what  happened  to 
drift  across  their  doorsteps;  that  apart 
from  a  few  sporadic  exposures  and  out- 
cries they  made  no  plans  to  bring  these 
common   carriers  under  social  control; 
that  they  provided  no  genuine  training 
schools  for  the  men  upon  whose  sagacity 
they  were  dependent;  above  all  that  their 
political   scientists   went   on   year   after 
year  writing  and  lecturing  about  govern- 
ment without  producing  one,  one  single, 
significant  study  of  the  process  of  public 
opinion?"    And  then  they  will  recall  the 
centuries  in  which  the  Church  enjoyed 
immunity   from  criticism,   and  perhaps 
they  will  insist  that  the  news  structure  of 
secular  society  was  not  seriously  exam- 
ined for  analogous  reasons. 

When  they  search  into  the  personal 
records  they  will  find  that  among  jour- 
nalists, as  among  the  clergy,  institution- 
15 


Liberty  and  the  News 

alism  had  induced  the  usual  prudence.  I 
have  made  no  criticism  in  this  book 
which  is  not  the  shoptalk  of  reporters 
and  editors.  But  only  rarely  do  news- 
papermen take  the  general  public  into 
their  confidence.  They  will  have  to 
sooner  or  later.  It  is  not  enough  for 
them  to  struggle  against  great  odds,  as 
many  of  them  are  doing,  wearing  out 
their  souls  to  do  a  particular  assignment 
well.  The  philosophy  of  the  work  itself 
needs  to  be  discussed ;  the  news  about  the 
news  needs  to  be  told.  For  the  news 
about  the  government  of  the  news  struc- 
ture touches  the  center  of  all  modern 
government. 

They  need  not  be  much  concerned  if 
leathery-minded  individuals  ask  What 
is  Truth  of  all  who  plead  for  the  effort 
of  truth  in  modern  journalism.  Jesting 
Pilate  asked  the  same  question,  and  he 
also  would  not  stay  for  an  answer.  No 
16 


Journalism  and  the  Higher  Law 

doubt  an  organon  of  news  reporting  must 
wait  upon  the  development  of  psychol- 
ogy and  political  science.  But  resistance 
to  the  inertias  of  the  profession,  heresy 
to  the  institution,  and  the  willingness  to 
be  fired  rather  than  write  what  you  do 
not  believe,  these  wait  on  nothing  but 
personal  courage.  And  without  the  as- 
sistance which  they  will  bring  from 
within  the  profession  itself,  democracy 
through  it  will  deal  with  the  problem 
somehow,  will  deal  with  it  badly. 

The  essays  which  follow  are  an  at- 
tempt to  describe  the  character  of  the 
problem,  and  to  indicate  headings  un- 
der which  it  may  be  found  useful  to  look 
for  remedies. 


WHAT  MODERN  LIBERTY 

MEANS 

FROM  our  recent  experience  it  is 
clear  that  the  traditional  liberties 
of  speech  and  opinion  rest  on  no  solid 
foundation.  At  a  time  when  the  world 
needs  above  all  other  things  the  activity 
of  generous  imaginations  and  the  crea- 
tive leadership  of  planning  and  inventive 
minds,  our  thinking  is  shriveled  with 
panic.  Time  and  energy  that  should  go 
to  building  and  restoring  are  instead  con- 
sumed in  warding  off  the  pin-pricks  of 
prejudice  and  fighting  a  guerilla  war 
against  misunderstanding  and  intoler- 
ance. For  suppression  is  felt,  not  simply 
by  the  scattered  individuals  who  are  ac- 
tually suppressed.  It  reaches  back  into 
the  steadiest  minds,  creating  tension 
19 


Liberty  and  the  News 

everywhere;  and  the  tension  of  fear  pro- 
duces sterility.  Men  cease  to  say  what 
they  think;  and  when  they  cease  to  say 
it,  they  soon  cease  to  think  it.  They 
think  in  reference  to  their  critics  and  not 
in  reference  to  the  facts.  For  when 
thought  becomes  socially  hazardous,  men 
spend  more  time  wondering  about  the 
hazard  than  they  do  in  cultivating  their 
thought.  Yet  nothing  is  more  certain 
than  that  mere  bold  resistance  will  not 
permanently  liberate  men's  minds.  The 
problem  is  not  only  greater  than  that,  but 
different,  and  the  time  is  ripe  for  recon- 
sideration. We  have  learned  that  many 
of  the  hard-won  rights  of  man  are  ut- 
terly insecure.  It  may  be  that  we  can- 
not make  them  secure  simply  by  imitat- 
ing the  earlier  champions  of  liberty. 

Something  important  about  the  human 
character  was  exposed  by  Plato  when, 
with  the  spectacle  of  Socrates's  death  be- 
20 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

fore  him,  he  founded  Utopia  on  a  cen- 
sorship stricter  than  any  which  exists  on 
this  heavily  censored  planet.  His  intol- 
erance seems  strange.  But  it  is  really  the 
logical  expression  of  an  impulse  that 
most  of  us  have  not  the  candor  to  recog- 
nize. It  was  the  service  of  Plato  to 
formulate  the  dispositions  of  men  in  the 
shape  of  ideals,  and  the  surest  things  we 
can  learn  from  him  are  not  what  we 
ought  to  do,  but  what  we  are  inclined 
to  do.  We  are  peculiarly  inclined  to 
suppress  whatever  impugns  the  security 
of  that  to  which  we  have  given  our  al- 
legiance. If  our  loyalty  is  turned  to  what 
exists,  intolerance  begins  at  its  frontiers; 
if  it  is  turned,  as  Plato's  was,  to  Utopia, 
we  shall  find  Utopia  defended  with  in- 
tolerance. 

There  are,  so  far  as  I  can  discover,  no 
absolutists  of  liberty;  I  can  recall  no 
doctrine  of  liberty,  which,  under  the  acid 

21 


Liberty  and  the  News 

test,  does  not  become  contingent  upon 
some  other  ideal.  The  goal  is  never  lib- 
erty, but  liberty  for  something  or  other. 
For  liberty  is  a  condition  under  which 
activity  takes  place,  and  men's  interests 
attach  themselves  primarily  to  their  ac- 
tivities and  what  is  necessary  to  fulfill 
them,  not  to  the  abstract  requirements 
of  any  activity  that  might  be  conceived. 

And  yet  controversialists  rarely  take 
this  into  account.  The  battle  is  fought 
with  banners  on  which  are  inscribed  ab- 
solute and  universal  ideals.  They  are 
not  absolute  and  universal  in  fact.  No 
man  has  ever  thought  out  an  absolute  or 
a  universal  ideal  in  politics,  for  the  sim- 
ple reason  that  nobody  knows  enough, 
or  can  know  enough,  to  do  it.  But  we 
all  use  absolutes,  because  an  ideal  which 
seems  to  exist  apart  from  time,  space, 
and  circumstance  has  a  prestige  that  no 
candid  avowal  of  special  purpose  can 
22 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

ever  have.  Looked  at  from  one  point  of 
view  universals  are  part  of  the  fighting 
apparatus  in  men.  What  they  desire 
enormously  they  easily  come  to  call 
God's  will,  or  their  nation's  purpose. 
Looked  at  genetically,  these  idealizations 
are  probably  born  in  that  spiritual  rev- 
erie where  all  men  live  most  of  the  time. 
In  reverie  there  is  neither  time,  space, 
nor  particular  reference,  and  hope  is  om- 
nipotent. This  omnipotence,  which  is 
denied  to  them  in  action,  nevertheless  il- 
luminates activity  with  a  sense  of  utter 
and  irresistible  value. 

The  classic  doctrine  of  liberty  consists 
of  absolutes.  It  consists  of  them  except 
at  the  critical  points  where  the  author 
has  come  into  contact  with  objective  diffi- 
culties. Then  he  introduces  into  the  ar- 
gument, somewhat  furtively,  a  reserva- 
tion which  liquidates  its  universal  mean- 
ing and  reduces  the  exalted  plea  for 
23 


Liberty  and  the  News 

liberty  in  general  to  a  special  argument 
for  the  success  of  a  special  purpose. 

There  are  at  the  present  time,  for  in- 
stance, no  more  fervent  champions  of 
liberty  than  the  western  sympathizers 
with  the  Russian  Soviet  government. 
Why  is  it  that  they  are  indignant  when 
Mr.  Burleson  suppresses  a  newspaper  and 
complacent  when  Lenin  does?  And, 
vice  versa,  why  is  it  that  the  anti-Bol- 
shevist forces  in  the  world  are  in  favor 
of  restricting  constitutional  liberty  as  a 
preliminary  to  establishing  genuine  lib- 
erty in  Russia?  Clearly  the  argument 
about  liberty  has  little  actual  relation  to 
the  existence  of  it.  It  is  the  purpose  of 
the  social  conflict,  not  the  freedom  of 
opinion,  that  lies  close  to  the  heart  of  the 
partisans.  The  word  liberty  is  a  weapon 
and  an  advertisement,  but  certainly  not 
an  ideal  which  transcends  all  special 
aims. 

24 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

If  there  were  any  man  who  believed 
in  liberty  apart  from  particular  pur- 
poses, that  man  would  be  a  hermit  con- 
templating all  existence  with  a  hopeful 
and  neutral  eye.  For  him,  in  the  last 
analysis,  there  could  be  nothing  worth 
resisting,  nothing  particularly  worth  at- 
taining, nothing  particularly  worth  de- 
fending, not  even  the  right  of  hermits 
to  contemplate  existence  with  a  cold  and 
neutral  eye.  He  would  be  loyal  simply 
to  the  possibilities  of  the  human  spirit, 
even  to  those  possibilities  which  most 
seriously  impair  its  variety  and  its  health. 
No  such  man  has  yet  counted  much  in 
the  history  of  politics.  For  what  every 
theorist  of  liberty  has  meant  is  that  cer- 
tain types  of  behavior  and  classes  of 
opinion  hitherto  regulated  should  be 
somewhat  differently  regulated  in  the 
future.  What  each  seems  to  say  is  that 
opinion  and  action  should  be  free;  that 
25 


Liberty  and  the  News 

liberty  is  the  highest  and  most  sacred 
interest  of  life.  But  somewhere  each  of 
them  inserts  a  weasel  clause  to  the  ef- 
fect that  "of  course"  the  freedom  granted 
shall  not  be  employed  too  destructively. 
It  is  this  clause  which  checks  exuberance 
and  reminds  us  that,  in  spite  of  appear- 
ances, we  are  listening  to  finite  men 
pleading  a  special  cause. 

Among  the  English  classics  none  are 
more  representative  than  Milton's  Areo- 
pagitica  and  the  essay  On  Liberty  by 
John  Stuart  Mill.  Of  living  men  Mr. 
Bertrand  Russell  is  perhaps  the  most 
outstanding  advocate  of  liberty.  The 
three  together  are  a  formidable  set  of  wit- 
nesses. Yet  nothing  is  easier  than  to 
draw  texts  from  each  which  can  be  cited 
either  as  an  argument  for  absolute  lib- 
erty or  as  an  excuse  for  as  much  repres- 
sion as  seems  desirable  at  the  moment. 
Says  Milton: 

26 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

Yet  if  all  cannot  be  of  one  mind,  as  who 
looks  they  should  be?  this  doubtles  is  more 
wholsome,  more  prudent,  and  more  Chris- 
tian that  many  be  tolerated,  rather  than  all 
compell' d. 

So  much  for  the  generalization.  Now 
for  the  qualification  which  follows  im- 
mediately upon  it. 

I  mean  not  tolerated  Popery,  and  open 
superstition,  which  as  it  extirpats  all  re- 
ligions and  civill  supremacies,  so  itself  should 
be  extirpat,  provided  first  that  all  charitable 
and  compassionat  means  be  used  to  win  and 
regain  the  weak  and  misled:  that  also  which 
is  impious  or  evil  absolutely  either  against 
faith  or  maners  no  law  can  possibly  permit, 
that  intends  not  to  unlaw  it  self:  but  those 
neighboring  differences,  or  rather  indiffer- 
ences, are  what  I  speak  of,  whether  in  some 
point  of  doctrine  or  of  discipline,  which 
though  they  may  be  many,  yet  need  not  in- 
terrupt the  unity  of  spirit,  if  we  could  but 
find  among  us  the  bond  of  peace. 
27 


Liberty  and  the  News 

With  this  as  a  text  one  could  set  up 
an  inquisition.  Yet  it  occurs  in  the  nob- 
lest plea  for  liberty  that  exists  in  the 
English  language.  The  critical  point  in 
Milton's  thought  is  revealed  by  the  word 
"indifferences."  The  area  of  opinion 
which  he  wished  to  free  comprised  the 
"neighboring  differences"  of  certain 
Protestant  sects,  and  only  these  where 
they  were  truly  ineffective  in  manners 
and  morals.  Milton,  in  short,  had  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  certain  conflicts 
of  doctrine  were  sufficiently  insignificant 
to  be  tolerated.  The  conclusion  de- 
pended far  less  upon  his  notion  of  the 
value  of  liberty  than  upon  his  conception 
of  God  and  human  nature  and  the  Eng- 
land of  his  time.  He  urged  indifference 
to  things  that  were  becoming  indifferent. 

If  we  substitute  the  word  indifference 
for  the  word  liberty,  we  shall  come  much 
closer  to  the  real  intention  that  lies  be- 
28 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

hind  the  classic  argument.  Liberty  is  to 
be  permitted  where  differences  are  of  no 
great  moment.  It  is  this  definition  which 
has  generally  guided  practice.  In  times 
when  men  feel  themselves  secure,  heresy 
is  cultivated  as  the  spice  of  life.  During 
a  war  liberty  disappears  as  the  commu- 
nity feels  itself  menaced.  When  revolu- 
tion seems  to  be  contagious,  heresy-hunt- 
ing is  a  respectable  occupation.  In  other 
words,  when  men  are  not  afraid,  they 
are  not  afraid  of  ideas;  when  they  are 
much  afraid,  they  are  afraid  of  anything 
that  seems,  or  can  even  be  made  to  ap- 
pear, seditious.  That  is  why  nine-tenths 
of  the  effort  to  live  and  let  live  consists 
in  proving  that  the  thing  we  wish  to  have 
tolerated  is  really  a  matter  of  indiffer- 
ence. 

In  Mill  this  truth  reveals  itself  still 

more  clearly.     Though  his  argument  is 
29 


Liberty  and  the  News 

surer  and  completer  than  Milton's,  the 
qualification  is  also  surer  and  completer. 

Such  being  the  reasons  which  make  it  im- 
perative that  human  beings  should  be  free  to 
form  opinions,  and  to  express  their  opinions 
without  reserve ;  and  such  the  baneful  conse- 
quences to  the  intellectual  and  through  that 
to  the  moral  nature  of  man,  unless  this  lib" 
erty  is  either  conceded  or  asserted  in  spite 
of  prohibition,  let  us  next  examine  whether 
the  same  reasons  do  not  require  that  men 
should  be  free  to  act  upon  their  opinions,  to 
carry  these  out  in  their  lives,  without  hin- 
drance, either  moral  or  physical,  from  their 
fellow  men,  so  long  as  it  is  at  their  own  risk 
and  peril.  This  last  proviso  is  of  course  in- 
dispensable. No  one  pretends  that  actions 
should  be  as  free  as  opinions.  On  the  con- 
trary, even  opinions  lose  their  immunity  when 
the  circumstances  in  which  they  are  expressed 
are  such  as  to  constitute  their  expression  a 
positive  instigation  to  some  mischievous  act. 

"At  their   own   risk  and  peril."     In 
other  words,  at  the  risk  of  eternal  dam- 
nation.   The  premise  from  which  Mill 
30 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

argued  was  that  many  opinions  then  un- 
der the  ban  of  society  were  of  no  interest 
to  society,  and  ought  therefore  not  to  be 
interfered  with.  The  orthodoxy  with 
which  he  was  at  war  was  chiefly  theo- 
cratic. It  assumed  that  a  man's  opin- 
ions on  cosmic  affairs  might  endanger  his 
personal  salvation  and  make  him  a  dan- 
gerous member  of  society.  Mill  did  not 
believe  in  the  theological  view,  did  not 
fear  damnation,  and  was  convinced  that 
morality  did  not  depend  upon  the  re- 
ligious sanction.  In  fact,  he  was  con- 
vinced that  a  more  reasoned  morality 
could  be  formed  by  laying  aside  theolog- 
ical assumptions.  "But  no  one  pretends 
that  actions  should  be  as  free  as  opin- 
ions." The  plain  truth  is  that  Mill  did 
not  believe  that  much  action  would  re- 
sult from  the  toleration  of  those  opinions 
in  which  he  was  most  interested. 

Political  heresy  occupied  the  fringe  of 


Liberty  and  the  News 

his  attention,  and  he  uttered  only  the 
most  casual  comments.  So  incidental 
are  they,  so  little  do  they  impinge  on  his 
mind,  that  the  arguments  of  this  staunch 
apostle  of  liberty  can  be  used  honestly, 
and  in  fact  are  used,  to  justify  the  bulk 
of  the  suppressions  which  have  recently 
occurred.  "Even  opinions  lose  their  im- 
munity, when  the  circumstances  in  which 
they  are  expressed  are  such  as  to  consti- 
tute their  expression  a  positive  instiga- 
tion to  some  mischievious  act."  Clearly 
there  is  no  escape  here  for  Debs  or  Hay- 
wood  or  obstructors  of  Liberty  Loans. 
The  argument  used  is  exactly  the  one 
employed  in  sustaining  the  conviction  of 
Debs. 

In  corroboration  Mill's  single  concrete 
instance  may  be  cited:  "An  opinion  that 
corn  dealers  are  starvers  of  the  poor,  or 
that  private  property  is  robbery,  ought 
to  be  unmolested  when  simply  circulated 
32 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

through  the  press,  but  may  justly  incur 
punishment  when  delivered  orally  to  an 
excited  mob  assembled  before  the  house 
of  a  corn  dealer,  or  when  handed  about 
among  the  same  mob  in  the  form  of  a 
placard." 

Clearly  Mill's  theory  of  liberty  wore 
a  different  complexion  when  he  consid- 
ered opinions  which  might  directly  affect 
social  order.  Where  the  stimulus  of 
opinion  upon  action  was  effective  he 
could  say  with  entire  complacency,  "The 
liberty  of  the  individual  must  be  thus  far 
limited;  he  must  not  make  himself  a 
nuisance  to  other  people."  Because  Mill 
believed  this,  it  is  entirely  just  to  infer 
that  the  distinction  drawn  between  a 
speech  or  placard  and  publication  in  the 
press  would  soon  have  broken  down  for 
Mill  had  he  lived  at  a  time  when  the 
press  really  circulated  and  the  art  of 
33 


Liberty  and  the  News 

type-display    had    made    a    newspaper 
strangely  like  a  placard. 

On  first  acquaintance  no  man  would 
seem  to  go  further  than  Mr.  Bertrand 
Russell  in  loyalty  to  what  he  calls  "the 
unfettered  development  of  all  the  in- 
stincts that  build  up  life  and  fill  it  with 
mental  delights."  He  calls  these  in- 
stincts "creative";  and  against  them  he 
sets  off  the  "possessive  impulses."  These, 
he  says,  should  be  restricted  by  "a  pub- 
lic authority,  a  repository  of  practically 
irresistible  force  whose  function  should 
be  primarily  to  repress  the  private  use 
of  force."  Where  Milton  said  no  "tol- 
erated Popery,"  Mr.  Russell  says,  no  tol- 
erated "possessive  impulses."  Surely  he 
is  open  to  the  criticism  that,  like  every 
authoritarian  who  has  preceded  him,  he 
is  interested  in  the  unfettered  develop- 
ment of  only  that  which  seems  good  to 
him.  Those  who  think  that  "enlightened 
34 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

selfishness"  produces  social  harmony  will 
tolerate  more  of  the  possessive  impulses, 
and  will  be  inclined  to  put  certain  of 
Mr.  Russell's  creative  impulses  under 
lock  and  key. 

The  moral  is,  not  that  Milton,  Mill, 
and  Bertrand  Russell  are  inconsistent,  or 
that  liberty  is  to  be  obtained  by  arguing 
for  it  without  qualifications.  The  im- 
pulse to  what  we  call  liberty  is  as  strong 
in  these  three  men  as  it  is  ever  likely  to 
be  in  our  society.  The  moral  is  of  an- 
other kind.  It  is  that  the  traditional 
core  of  liberty,  namely,  the  notion  of  in- 
difference, is  too  feeble  and  unreal  a  doc- 
trine to  protect  the  purpose  of  liberty, 
which  is  the  furnishing  of  a  healthy  en- 
vironment in  which  human  judgment 
and  inquiry  can  most  successfully  organ- 
ize human  life.  Too  feeble,  because  in 
time  of  stress  nothing  is  easier  than  to 
insist,  and  by  insistence  to  convince,  that 
35 


Liberty  and  the  News 

tolerated  indifference  is  no  longer  toler- 
able because  it  has  ceased  to  be  indif- 
ferent. 

It  is  clear  that  in  a  society  where  pub- 
lic opinion  has  become  decisive,  noth- 
ing that  counts  in  the  formation  of  it 
can  really  be  a  matter  of  indifference. 
When  I  say  "can  be,"  I  am  speaking 
literally.  What  men  believed  about  the 
constitution  of  heaven  became  a  matter 
of  indifference  when  heaven  disappeared 
in  metaphysics;  but  what  they  believe 
about  property,  government,  conscrip- 
tion, taxation,  the  origins  of  the  late  war, 
or  the  origins  of  the  Franco-Prussian 
War,  or  the  distribution  of  Latin  culture 
in  the  vicinity  of  copper  mines,  consti- 
tutes the  difference  between  life  and 
death,  prosperity  and  misfortune,  and  it 
will  never  on  this  earth  be  tolerated  as 
indifferent,  or  not  interfered  with,  no 
matter  how  many  noble  arguments  are 

36 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

made  for  liberty,  or  how  many  martyrs 
give  their  lives  for  it.  If  widespread 
tolerance  of  opposing  views  is  to  be 
achieved  in  modern  society,  it  will  not 
be  simply  by  fighting  the  Debs'  cases 
through  the  courts,  and  certainly  not  by 
threatening  to  upset  those  courts  if  they 
do  not  yield  to  the  agitation.  The  task 
is  fundamentally  of  another  order,  re- 
quiring other  methods  and  other  theories. 
The  world  about  which  each  man  is 
supposed  to  have  opinions  has  become 
so  complicated  as  to  defy  his  powers  of 
understanding.  What  he  knows  of  events 
that  matter  enormously  to  him,  the  pur- 
poses of  governments,  the  aspirations  of 
peoples,  the  struggle  of  classes,  he  knows 
at  second,  third,  or  fourth  hand.  He 
cannot  go  and  see  for  himself.  Even  the 
things  that  are  near  to  him  have  become 
too  involved  for  his  judgment.  I  know 
of  no  man,  even  among  those  who  devote 
37 


Liberty  and  the  News 

all  of  their  time  to  watching  public  af- 
fairs, who  can  even  pretend  to  keep 
track,  at  the  same  time,  of  his  city  gov- 
ernment, his  state  government,  Congress, 
the  departments,  the  industrial  situation, 
and  the  rest  of  the  world.  What  men 
who  make  the  study  of  politics  a  voca- 
tion cannot  do,  the  man  who  has  an  hour 
a  day  for  newspapers  and  talk  cannot 
possibly  hope  to  do.  He  must  seize 
catchwords  and  headlines  or  nothing. 

This  vast  elaboration  of  the  subject- 
matter  of  politics  is  the  root  of  the  whole 
problem.  News  comes  from  a  distance; 
it  comes  helter-skelter,  in  inconceivable 
confusion;  it  deals  with  matters  that  are 
not  easily  understood;  it  arrives  and  is 
assimilated  by  busy  and  tired  people  who 
must  take  what  is  given  to  them.  Any 
lawyer  with  a  sense  of  evidence  knows 
how  unreliable  such  information  must 
necessarily  be. 

38 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

The  taking  of  testimony  in  a  trial  is 
hedged  about  with  a  thousand  precau- 
tions derived  from  long  experience  of 
the  fallibility  of  the  witness  and  the 
prejudices  of  the  jury.  We  call  this,  and 
rightly,  a  fundamental  phase  of  human 
liberty.  But  in  public  affairs  the  stake 
is  infinitely  greater.  It  involves  the  lives 
of  millions,  and  the  fortune  of  every- 
body. The  jury  is  the  whole  community, 
not  even  the  qualified  voters  alone.  The 
jury  is  everybody  who  creates  public 
sentiment — chattering  gossips,  unscrupu- 
lous liars,  congenital  liars,  feeble-mind- 
ed people,  prostitute  minds,  corrupting 
agents.  To  this  jury  any  testimony  is 
submitted,  is  submitted  in  any  form,  by 
any  anonymous  person,  with  no  test  of 
reliability,  no  test  of  credibility,  and  no 
penalty  for  perjury.  If  I  lie  in  a  lawsuit 
involving  the  fate  of  my  neighbor's  cow, 
I  can  go  to  jail.  But  if  I  lie  to  a  million 
39 


Liberty  and  the  News 

readers  in  a  matter  involving  war  and 
peace,  I  can  lie  my  head  off,  and,  if  I 
choose  the  right  series  of  lies,  be  entirely 
irresponsible.  Nobody  will  punish  me  if 
I  lie  about  Japan,  for  example.  I  can 
announce  that  every  Japanese  valet  is  a 
reservist,  and  every  Japanese  art  store  a 
mobilization  center.  I  am  immune. 
And  if  there  should  be  hostilities  with 
Japan,  the  more  I  lied  the  more  popular 
I  should  be.  If  I  asserted  that  the  Jap- 
anese secretly  drank  the  blood  of  chil- 
dren, that  Japanese  women  were  un- 
chaste, that  the  Japanese  were  really  not 
a  branch  of  the  human  race  after  all,  I 
guarantee  that  most  of  the  newspapers 
would  print  it  eagerly,  and  that  I  could 
get  a  hearing  in  churches  all  over  the 
country.  And  all  this  for  the  simple 
reason  that  the  public,  when  it  is  de- 
pendent on  testimony  and  protected  by 
no  rules  of  evidence,  can  act  only  on  the 
40 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

excitement  of  its  pugnacities  and  its 
hopes. 

The  mechanism  of  the  news-supply 
has  developed  without  plan,  and  there  is 
no  one  point  in  it  at  which  one  can  fix 
the  responsibility  for  truth.  The  fact  is 
that  the  subdivision  of  labor  is  now  ac- 
companied by  the  subdivision  of  the 
news-organization.  At  one  end  of  it  is 
the  eye-witness,  at  the  other,  the  reader. 
Between  the  two  is  a  vast,  expensive 
transmitting  and  editing  apparatus.  This 
machine  works  marvelously  well  at  times, 
particularly  in  the  rapidity  with  which 
it  can  report  the  score  of  a  game  or  a 
transatlantic  flight,  or  the  death  of  a 
monarch,  or  the  result  of  an  election. 
But  where  the  issue  is  complex,  as  for 

example  in  the  matter  of  the  success  of 

« 

a  policy,  or  the  social  conditions  among 
a  foreign  people, — that  is  to  say,  where 
the  real  answer  is  neither  yes  or  no,  but 


Liberty  and  the  News 

subtle,  and  a  matter  of  balanced  evi- 
dence,— the  subdivision  of  the  labor  in- 
volved in  the  report  causes  no  end  of 
derangement,  misunderstanding,  and 
even  misrepresentation. 

Thus  the  number  of  eye-witnesses  cap- 
able of  honest  statement  is  inadequate 
and  accidental.  Yet  the  reporter  mak- 
ing up  -his  news  is  dependent  upon  the 
eye-witnesses.  They  may  be  actors  in  the 
event.  Then  they  can  hardly  be  expected 
to  have  perspective.  Who,  for  example, 
if  he  put  aside  his  own  likes  and  dislikes 
would  trust  a  Bolshevik's  account  of 
what  exists  in  Soviet  Russia  or  an  exiled 
Russian  prince's  story  of  what  exists  in 
Siberia?  Sitting  just  across  the  frontier, 
say  in  Stockholm,  how  is  a  reporter  to 
write  dependable  news  when  his  wit- 
nesses consist  of  emigres  or  Bolshevist 
agents  ? 

At  the  Peace  Conference,  news  was 
42 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

given  out  by  the  agents  of  the  conferees 
and  the  rest  leaked  through  those  who 
were  clamoring  at  the  doors  of  the  Con- 
ference. Now  the  reporter,  if  he  is  to 
earn  his  living,  must  nurse  his  personal 
contacts  with  the  eye-witnesses  and  privi- 
leged informants.  If  he  is  openly  hos- 
tile to  those  in  authority,  he  will  cease 
to  be  a  reporter  unless  there  is  an  op- 
position party  in  the  inner  circle  who  can 
feed  him  news.  Failing  that,  he  will 
know  precious  little  of  what  is  going  on. 
Most  people  seem  to  believe  that,  when 
they  meet  a  war  correspondent  or  a  spe- 
cial writer  from  the  Peace  Conference, 
they  have  seen  a  man  who  has  seen  the 
things  he  wrote  about.  Far  from  it 
Nobody,  for  example,  saw  this  war. 
Neither  the  men  in  the  trenches  nor  the 
commanding,  general.  The  men  saw 
their  trenches,  their  billets,  sometimes 
they  saw  an  enemy  trench,  but  nobody, 
43 


Liberty  and  the  News 

unless  it  be  the  aviators,  saw  a  battle. 
What  the  correspondents  saw,  occasion- 
ally, was  the  terrain  over  which  a  battle 
had  been  fought;  but  what  they  reported 
day  by  day  was  what  they  were  told  at 
press  headquarters,  and  of  that  only  what 
they  were  allowed  to  tell. 

At  the  Peace  Conference  the  reporters 
were  allowed  to  meet  periodically  the 
four  least  important  members  of  the 
Commission,  men  who  themselves  had 
considerable  difficulty  in  keeping  track 
of  things,  as  any  reporter  who  was  pres- 
ent will  testify.  This  was  supplemented 
by  spasmodic  personal  interviews  with 
the  commissioners,  their  secretaries,  their 
secretaries'  secretaries,  other  newspaper 
men,  and  confidential  representatives  of 
the  President,  who  stood  between  him 
and  the  impertinences  of  curiosity.  This 
and  the  French  press,  than  which  there 
is  nothing  more  censored  and  inspired,  a 
44 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

local  English  trade-journal  of  the  ex- 
patriates, the  gossip  of  the  Crillon  lobby, 
the  Majestic,  and  the  other  official  ho- 
tels, constituted  the  source  of  the  news 
upon  which  American  editors  and  the 
American  people  have  had  to  base  one 
of  the  most  difficult  judgments  of  their 
history.  I  should  perhaps  add  that  there 
were  a  few  correspondents  occupying 
privileged  positions  with  foreign  govern- 
ments. They  wore  ribbons  in  their  but- 
ton-holes to  prove  it.  They  were  in 
many  ways  the  most  useful  correspond- 
ents because  they  always  revealed  to  the 
trained  reader  just  what  it  was  that  their 
governments  wished  America  to  believe. 
The  news  accumulated  by  the  reporter 
from  his  witnesses  has  to  be  selected,  if 
for  no  other  reason  than  that  the  cable 
facilities  are  limited.  At  the  cable  office 
several  varieties  of  censorship  intervene. 
The  legal  censorship  in  Europe  is  po- 
45 


Liberty  and  the  News 

litical  as  well  as  military,  and  both 
words  are  elastic.  It  has  been  applied, 
not  only  to  the  substance  of  the  news,  but 
to  the  mode  of  presentation,  and  even  to 
the  character  of  the  type  and  the  position 
on  the  page.  But  the  real  censorship 
on  the  wires  is  the  cost  of  transmission. 
This  in  itself  is  enough  to  limit  any  ex- 
pensive competition  or  any  significant  in- 
dependence. The  big  Continental  news 
agencies  are  subsidized.  Censorship 
operates  also  through  congestion  and  the 
resultant  need  of  a  system  of  priority. 
Congestion  makes  possible  good  and  bad 
service,  and  undesirable  messages  are  not 
infrequently  served  badly. 

When  the  report  does  reach  the  edi- 
tor, another  series  of  interventions  oc- 
curs. The  editor  is  a  man  who  may 
know  all  about  something,  but  he  can 
hardly  be  expected  to  know  all  about 
everything.  Yet  he  has  to  decide  the 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

question  which  is  of  more  importance 
than  any  other  in  the  formation  of  opin- 
ions, the'  question  where  attention  is  to 
be  directed.  In  a  newspaper  the  heads 
are  the  foci  of  attention,  the  odd  cor- 
ners the  fringe;  and  whether  one  aspect 
of  the  news  or  another  appears  in  the 
center  or  at  the  periphery  makes  all  the 
difference  in  the  world.  The  news  of 
the  day  as  it  reaches  the  newspaper  of- 
fice is  an  incredible  medley  of  fact,  prop- 
aganda, rumor,  suspicion,  clues,  hopes, 
and  fears,  and  the  task  of  selecting  and 
ordering  that  news  is  one  of  the  truly 
sacred  and  priestly  offices  in  a  democ- 
racy. For  the  newspaper  is  in  all  literal- 
ness  the  bible  of  democracy,  the  book 
out  of  which  a  people  determines  its  con- 
duct. It  is  the  only  serious  book  most 
people  read.  It  is  the  only  book  they 
read  every  day.  Now  the  power  to  de- 
termine each  day  what  shall  seem  impor- 
47 


Liberty  and  the  News 

tant  and  what  shall  be  neglected  is  a 
power  unlike  any  that  has  been  exercised 
since  the  Pope  lost  his  hold  on  the  secu- 
lar mind. 

The  ordering  is  not  done  by  one  man, 
but  by  a  host  of  men,  who  are  on  the 
whole  curiously  unanimous  in  their  se- 
lection and  in  their  emphasis.  Once  you 
know  the  party  and  social  affiliations  of 
a  newspaper,  you  can  predict  with  con- 
siderable certainty  the  perspective  in 
which  the  news  will  be  displayed.  This 
perspective  is  by  no  means  altogether 
deliberate.  Though  the  editor  is  ever  so 
much  more  sophisticated  than  all  but  a 
minority  of  his  readers,  his  own  sense  of 
relative  importance  is  determined  by 
rather  standardized  constellations  of 
ideas.  He  very  soon  comes  to  believe 
that  his  habitual  emphasis  is  the  only 
possible  one. 

Why  the  editor  is  possessed  by  a  par- 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

ticular  set  of  ideas  is  a  difficult  question 
in  social  psychology,  of  which  no  ade- 
quate analysis  has  been  made.  But  we 
shall  not  be  far  wrong  if  we  say  that  he 
deals  with  the  news  in  reference  to  the 
prevailing  mores  of  his  social  group. 
These  mores  are  of  course  in  a  large 
measure  the  product  of  what  previous 
newspapers  have  said;  and  experience 
shows  that,  in  order  to  break  out  of  this 
circle,  it  has  been  necessary  at  various 
times  to  create  new  forms  of  journalism, 
such  as  the  national  monthly,  the  criti- 
cal weekly,  the  circular,  the  paid  adver- 
tisements of  ideas,  in  order  to  change  the 
emphasis  which  had  become  obsolete  and 
habit-ridden. 

Into  this  extremely  refractory,  and  I 
think  increasingly  disserviceable  mech- 
anism, there  has  been  thrown,  especially 
since  the  outbreak  of  war,  another  mon- 
key-wrench— propaganda.  The  word,  of 
49 


Liberty  and  the  News 

course,  covers  a  multitude  of  sins  and  a 
few  virtues.  The  virtues  can  be  easily 
separated  out,  and  given  another  name, 
either  advertisement  or  advocacy.  Thus, 
if  the  National  Council  of  Belgravia 
wishes  to  publish  a  magazine  out  of  its 
own  funds,  under  its  own  imprint,  advo- 
cating the  annexation  of  Thrums,  no  one 
will  object.  But  if,  in  support  of  that 
advocacy,  it  gives  to  the  press  stories  that 
are  lies  about  the  atrocities  committed 
in  Thrums ;  or,  worse  still,  if  those  stories 
seem  to  come  from  Geneva,  or  Amster- 
dam, not  from  the  press-service  of  the 
National  Council  of  Belgravia,  then  Bel- 
gravia is  conducting  propaganda.  If, 
after  arousing  a  certain  amount  of  inter- 
est in  itself,  Belgravia  then  invites  a 
carefully  selected  correspondent,  or  per- 
haps a  labor  leader,  to  its  capital,  puts 
him  up  at  the  best  hotel,  rides  him 
around  in  limousines,  fawns  on  him  at 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

banquets,  lunches  with  him  very  confi- 
dentially, and  then  puts  him  through  a 
conducted  tour  so  that  he  shall  see  just 
what  will  create  the  desired  impression, 
then  again  Belgravia  is  conducting  prop- 
aganda. Or  if  Belgravia  happens  to 
possess  the  greatest  trombone-player  in 
the  world,  and  if  she  sends  him  over  to 
charm  the  wives  of  influential  husbands, 
Belgravia  is,  in  a  less  objectionable  way, 
perhaps,  committing  propaganda,  and 
making  fools  of  the  husbands. 

Now,  the  plain  fact  is  that  out  of  the 
troubled  areas  of  the  world  the  public 
receives  practically  nothing  that  is  not 
propaganda.  Lenin  and  his  enemies  con- 
trol all  the  news  there  is  of  Russia,  and 
no  court  of  law  would  accept  any  of  the 
testimony  as  valid  in  a  suit  to  determine 
the  possession  of  a  donkey.  I  am  writ- 
ing many  months  after  the  Armistice. 
The  Senate  is  at  this  moment  engaged 


Liberty  and  the  News 

in  debating  the  question  whether  it  will 
guarantee  the  frontiers  of  Poland;  but 
what  we  learn  of  Poland  we  learn  from 
the  Polish  Government  and  the  Jewish 
Committee.  Judgment  on  the  vexed  is- 
sues of  Europe  is  simply  out  of  the  ques- 
tion for  the  average  American;  and  the 
more  cocksure  he  is,  the  more  certainly 
is  he  the  victim  of  some  propaganda. 

These  instances  are  drawn  from  for- 
eign affairs,  but  the  difficulty  at  home, 
although  less  flagrant,  is  nevertheless 
real.  Theodore  Roosevelt,  and  Leonard 
Wood  after  him,  have  told  us  to  think 
nationally.  It  is  not  easy.  It  is  easy 
to  parrot  what  those  people  say  who  live 
in  a  few  big  cities  and  who  have  consti- 
tuted themselves  the  only  true  and  au- 
thentic voice  of  America.  But  beyond 
that  it  is  difficult.  I  live  in  New  York 
and  I  have  not  the  vaguest  idea  what 
Brooklyn  is  interested  in.  It  is  possible, 
52 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

with  effort,  much  more  effort  than  most 
people  can  afford  to  give,  for  me  to  know 
what  a  few  organized  bodies  like  the 
Non-Partisan  League,  the  National  Se- 
curity League,  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor,  and  the  Republican  National 
Committee  are  up  to;  but  what  the  un- 
organized workers,  and  the  unorganized 
farmers,  the  shopkeepers,  the  local  bank- 
ers and  boards  of  trade  are  thinking  and^ 
feeling,  no  one  has  any  means  of  know- 
ing, except  perhaps  in  a  vague  way 
at  election  time.  To  think  nationally 
means,  at  least,  to  take  into  account  the 
major  interests  and  needs  and  desires  of 
this  continental  population;  and  for  that 
each  man  would  need  a  staff  of  secre- 
taries, traveling  agents,  and  a  very  ex- 
pensive press-clipping  bureau. 

We  do   not  think  nationally  because 
the  facts  that  count  are  not  systemati- 
cally reported  and  presented  in  a  form 
53 


Liberty  and  the  News 

we  can  digest.  Our  most  abysmal  igno- 
rance occurs  where  we  deal  with  the  im- 
migrant. If  we  read  his  press  at  all,  it 
is  to  discover  "Bolshevism"  in  it  and  to 
blacken  all  immigrants  with  suspicion. 
For  his  culture  and  his  aspirations,  for 
his  high  gifts  of  hope  and  variety,  we 
have  neither  eyes  nor  ears.  The  immi- 
grant colonies  are  like  holes  in  the  road 
which  we  never  notice  until  we  trip  over 
them.  Then,  because  we  have  no  cur- 
rent information  and  no  background  of 
facts,  we  are,  of  course,  the  undiscrim- 
inating  objects  of  any  agitator  who 
chooses  to  rant  against  "foreigners." 

Now,  men  who  have  lost  their  grip 
upon  the  relevant  facts  of  their  envir- 
onment are  the  inevitable  victims  of 
agitation  and  propaganda.  The  quack, 
the  charlatan,  the  jingo,  and  the  terrorist, 
can  flourish  only  where  the  audience  is 
deprived  of  independent  access  to  infor- 
54 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

mation.  But  where  all  news  comes  at 
second-hand,  where  all  the  testimony  is 
uncertain,  men  cease  to  respond  to  truths, 
and  respond  simply  to  opinions.  The 
environment  in  which  they  act  is  not  the 
realities  themselves,  but  the  pseudo-en- 
vironment of  reports,  rumors,  and 
guesses.  The  whole  reference  of  thought 
comes  to  be  what  somebody  asserts,  not 
what  actually  is.  Men  ask,  not  whether 
such  and  such  a  thing  occurred  in  Rus- 
sia, but  whether  Mr.  Raymond  Robins 
is  at  heart  more  friendly  to  the  Bolshe- 
viki  than  Mr.  Jerome  Landfield.  And 
so,  since  they  are  deprived  of  any  trust- 
worthy means  of  knowing  what  is  really 
going  on,  since  everything  is  on  the  plane 
of  assertion  and  propaganda,  they  be- 
lieve whatever  fits  most  comfortably  with 
their  prepossessions. 

That  this  breakdown  of  the  means  of 
public  knowledge  should  occur  at  a  time 
55 


Liberty  and  the  News 

of  immense  change  is  a  compounding  of 
the  difficulty.  From  bewilderment  to 
panic  is  a  short  step,  as  everyone  knows 
who  has  watched  a  crowd  when  danger 
threatens.  At  the  present  time  a  nation 
easily  acts  like  a  crowd.  Under  the  in- 
fluence of  headlines  and  panicky  print, 
the  contagion  of  unreason  can  easily 
spread  through  a  settled  community.  For 
when  the  comparatively  recent  and  un- 
stable nervous  organization  which  makes 
us  capable  of  responding  to  reality  as  it 
is,  and  not  as  we  should  wish  it,  is  baf- 
fled over  a  continuing  period  of  time,  the 
more  primitive  but  much  stronger  in- 
stincts are  let  loose. 

War  and  Revolution,  both  of  them 
founded  on  censorship  and  propaganda, 
are  the  supreme  destroyers  of  realistic 
thinking,  because  the  excess  of  danger 
and  the  fearful  overstimulation  of  pas- 
sion unsettle  disciplined  behavior.  Both 

56 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

breed  fanatics  of  all  kinds,  men  who,  in 
the  words  of  Mr.  Santayana,  have  re- 
doubled their  effort  when  they  have  for- 
gotten their  aim.  The  effort  itself  has 
become  the  aim.  Men  live  in  their  ef- 
fort, and  for  a  time  find  great  exaltation. 
They  seek  stimulation  of  their  effort 
rather  than  direction  of  it.  That  is  why 
both  in  war  and  revolution  there  seems 
to  operate  a  kind  of  Gresham's  Law  of 
the  emotions,  in  which  leadership  passes 
by  a  swift  degradation  from  a  Mirabeau 
to  a  Robespierre;  and  in  war,  from  a 
high-minded  statesmanship  to  the  depths 
of  virulent,  hating  jingoism. 

The  cardinal  fact  always  is  the  loss  of 
contact  with  objective  information.  Pub- 
lic as  well  as  private  reason  depends 
upon  it.  Not  what  somebody  says,  not 
what  somebody  wishes  were  true,  but 
wrhat  is  so  beyond  all  our  opining,  con- 
stitutes the  touchstone  of  our  sanity.  And 
57 


Liberty  and  the  News 

a  society  which  lives  at  second-hand  will 
commit  incredible  follies  and  counte- 
nance inconceivable  brutalities  if  that 
contact  is  intermittent  and  untrust- 
worthy. Demagoguery  is  a  parasite  that 
flourishes  where  discrimination  fails, 
and  only  those  who  are  at  grips  with 
things  themselves  are  impervious  to  it. 
For,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  demagogue, 
whether  of  the  Right  or  the  Left,  is,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  an  undetected 
liar. 

Many  students  of  politics  have  con- 
cluded that,  because  public  opinion  was 
unstable,  the  remedy  lay  in  making  gov- 
ernment as  independent  of  it  as  possible. 
The  theorists  of  representative  govern- 
ment have  argued  persistently  from  this 
premise  against  the  believers  in  direct 
legislation.  But  it  appears  now  that, 
while  they  have  been  making  their  case 
against  direct  legislation,  rather  success- 

58 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

fully  it  seems  to  me,  they  have  failed 
sufficiently  to  notice  the  increasing  mal- 
ady of  representative  government. 

Parliamentary  action  is  becoming  no- 
toriously ineffective.  In  America  cer- 
tainly the  concentration  of  power  in  the 
Executive  is  out  of  all  proportion  either 
to  the  intentions  of  the  Fathers  or  to  the 
orthodox  theory  of  representative  gov- 
ernment. The  cause  is  fairly  clear.  Con- 
gress is  an  assemblage  of  men  selected 
for  local  reasons  from  districts.  It  brings 
to  Washington  a  more  or  less  accurate 
sense  of  the  superficial  desires  of  its  con- 
stituency. In  Washington  it  is  supposed 
to  think  nationally  and  internationally. 
But  for  that  task  its  equipment  and  its 
sources  of  information  are  hardly  better 
than  that  of  any  other  reader  of  the  news- 
paper. Except  for  its  spasmodic  investi- 
gating committees,  Congress  has  no  par- 
ticular way  of  informing  itself.  But  the 
59 


Liberty  and  the  News 

Executive  has.  The  Executive  is  an  elab- 
orate hierarchy  reaching  to  every  part  of 
the  nation  and  to  all  parts  of  the  world. 
It  has  an  independent  machinery,  fallible 
and  not  too  truthworthy,  of  course,  but 
nevertheless  a  machinery  of  intelligence. 
It  can  be  informed  and  it  can  act,  where- 
as Congress  is  not  informed  and  cannot 
act 

Now  the  popular  theory  of  represen- 
tative government  is  that  the  representa- 
tives have  the  information  and  therefore 
create  the  policy  which  the  executive  ad- 
ministers. The  more  subtle  theory  is  that 
the  executive  initiates  the  policy  which 
the  legislature  corrects  in  accordance 
with  popular  wisdom.  But  when  the  leg- 
islature is  haphazardly  informed,  this 
amounts  to  very  little,  and  the  people 
themselves  prefer  to  trust  the  executive 
which  knows,  rather  than  the  Congress 
which  is  vainly  trying  to  know.  The  re- 
60 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

suit  has  been  the  development  of  a  kind 
of  government  which  has  been  harshly 
described  as  plebiscite  autocracy,  or  gov- 
ernment by  newspapers.  Decisions  in 
the  modern  state  tend  to  be  made  by  the 
interaction,  not  of  Congress  and  the  exec- 
utive, but  of  public  opinion  and  the 
executive. 

Public  opinion  for  this  purpose  finds 
itself  collected  about  special  groups 
which  act  as  extra-legal  organs  of  gov- 
ernment. There  is  a  labor  nucleus,  a 
farmers'  nucleus,  a  prohibition  nucleus, 
a  National  Security  League  nucleus,  and 
so  on.  These  groups  conduct  a  continual 
electioneering  campaign  upon  the  un- 
formed, exploitable  mass  of  public  opin- 
ion. Being  special  groups,  they  have 
special  sources  of  information,  and  what 
they  lack  in  the  wray  of  information  is 
often  manufactured.  These  conflicting 
pressures  beat  upon  the  executive  depart- 
61 


Liberty  and  the  News 

ments  and  upon  Congress,  and  formulate 
the  conduct  of  the  government.  The 
government  itself  acts  in  reference  to 
these  groups  far  more  than  in  reference 
to  the  district  congressmen.  So  politics 
as  it  is  now  played  consists  in  coercing 
and  seducing  the  representative  by  the 
threat  and  the  appeal  of  these  unofficial 
groups.  Sometimes  they  are  the  allies, 
sometimes  the  enemies,  of  the  party  in 
power,  but  more  and  more  they  are  the 
energy  of  public  affairs.  Government 
tends  to  operate  by  the  impact  of  con- 
trolled opinion  upon  administration. 
This  shift  in  the  locus  of  sovereignty  has 
placed  a  premium  upon  the  manufacture 
of  what  is  usually  called  consent.  No 
wonder  that  the  most  powerful  news- 
paper proprietor  in  the  English-speak- 
ing world  declined  a  mere  government 
post. 

No  wonder,  too,  that  the  protection  of 
62 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

the  sources  of  its  opinion  is  the  basic 
problem  of  democracy.  Everything  else 
depends  upon  it.  Without  protection 
against  propaganda,  without  standards 
of  evidence,  without  criteria  of  emphasis, 
the  living  substance  of  all  popular  deci- 
sion is  exposed  to  every  prejudice  and 
to  infinite  exploitation.  That  is  why  I 
have  argued  that  the  older  doctrine  of 
liberty  was  misleading.  It  did  not  as- 
sume a  public  opinion  that  governs.  Es- 
sentially it  demanded  toleration  of  opin- 
ions that  were,  as  Milton  said,  indiffer- 
ent. It  can  guide  us  little  in  a  world 
where  opinion  is  sensitive  and  decisive. 

The  axis  of  the  controversy  needs  to 
be  shifted.  The  attempt  to  draw  fine 
distinctions  between  "liberty"  and  "li- 
cense" is  no  doubt  part  of  the  day's  work, 
but  it  is  fundamentally  a  negative  part. 
It  consists  in  trying  to  make  opinion  re- 
sponsible to  prevailing  social  standards, 

63 


Liberty  and  the  News 

whereas  the  really  important  thing  is  to 
try  and  make  opinion  increasingly  re- 
sponsible to  the  facts.  There  can  be  no 
liberty  for  a  community  which  lacks  the 
information  by  which  to  detect  lies. 
Trite  as  the  conclusion  may  at  first  seem, 
it  has,  I  believe,  immense  practical  con- 
sequences, and  may  perhaps  offer  an  es- 
cape from  the  logomachy  into  which  the 
contests  of  liberty  so  easily  degenerate. 

It  may  be  bad  to  suppress  a  particu- 
lar opinion,  but  the  really  deadly  thing 
is  to  suppress  the  news.  In  time  of  great 
insecurity,  certain  opinions  acting  on  un- 
stable minds  may  cause  infinite  disaster. 
Knowing  that  such  opinions  necessarily 
originate  in  slender  evidence,  that  they 
are  propelled  more  by  prejudice  from 
the  rear  than  by  reference  to  realities, 
it  seems  to  me  that  to  build  the  case  for 
liberty  upon  the  dogma  of  their  unlim- 
ited prerogatives  is  to  build  it  upon  the 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

poorest  foundation.  For,  even  though 
we  grant  that  the  world  is  best  served  by 
the  liberty  of  all  opinion,  the  plain  fact 
is  that  men  are  too  busy  and  too  much 
concerned  to  fight  more  than  spasmodi- 
cally for  such  liberty.  When  freedom  of 
opinion  is  revealed  as  freedom  of  error, 
illusion,  and  misinterpretation,  it  is  vir- 
tually impossible  to  stir  up  much  inter- 
est in  its  behalf.  It  is  the  thinnest  of  all 
abstractions  and  an  over-refinement  of 
mere  intellectualism.  But  people,  wide 
circles  of  people,  are  aroused  when  their 
curiosity  is  baulked.  The  desire  to  know, 
the  dislike  of  being  deceived  and  made 
game  of,  is  a  really  powerful  motive, 
and  it  is  that  motive  that  can  best  be  en- 
listed in  the  cause  of  freedom. 

What,  for  example,  was  the  one  most 
general  criticism  of  the  work  of  the 
Peace  Conference?  It  was  that  the  cove- 
nants were  not  openly  arrived  at.  This 


Liberty  and  the  News 

fact  stirred  Republican  Senators,  British 
Labor,  the  whole  gamut  of  parties  from 
the  Right  to  the  Left.  And  in  the  last 
analysis  lack  of  information  about  the 
Conference  was  the  origin  of  its  diffi- 
culties. Because  of  the  secrecy  endless 
suspicion  was  aroused;  because  of  it  the 
world  seemed  to  be  presented  with  a 
series  of  accomplished  facts  which  it 
could  not  reject  and  did  not  wish  alto- 
gether to  accept.  It  was  lack  of  infor- 
mation which  kept  public  opinion  from 
affecting  the  negotiations  at  the  time 
when  intervention  would  have  counted 
most  and  cost  least.  Publicity  occurred 
when  the  covenants  were  arrived  at,  with 
all  the  emphasis  on  the  at.  This  is  what 
the  Senate  objected  to,  and  this  is  what 
alienated  much  more  liberal  opinion 
than  the  Senate  represents. 

In  a  passage  quoted  previously  in  this 
essay,    Milton   said   that   differences   of 
66 


What  Modern  Liberty  Means 

opinion,  "which  though  they  may  be 
many,  yet  need  not  interrupt  the  unity 
of  spirit,  if  we  could  but  find  among  us 
the  bond  of  peace."  There  is  but  one 
kind  of  unity  possible  in  a  world  as  di- 
verse as  ours.  It  is  unity  of  method, 
rather  than  of  aim;  the  unity  of  the  dis- 
ciplined experiment.  There  is  but  one 
bond  of  peace  that  is  both  permanent 
and  enriching:  the  increasing  knowledge 
of  the  world  in  which  experiment  oc- 
curs. With  a  common  intellectual  meth- 
od and  a  common  area  of  valid  fact, 
differences  may  become  a  form  of  co- 
operation and  cease  to  be  an  irreconcil- 
able antagonism. 

That,  I  think,  constitutes  the  meaning 
of  freedom  for  us.  We  cannot  success- 
fully define  liberty,  or  accomplish  it,  by 
a  series  of  permissions  and  prohibitions. 
For  that  is  to  ignore  the  content  of  opin- 
ion in  favor  of  its  form.  Above  all,  it 

67 


Liberty  and  the  News 

is  an  attempt  to  define  liberty  of  opinion 
in  terms  of  opinion.  It  is  a  circular  and 
sterile  logic.  A  useful  definition  of  lib- 
erty is  obtainable  only  by  seeking  the 
principle  of  liberty  in  the  main  business 
of  human  life,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  pro- 
cess by  which  men  educate  their  response 
and  learn  to  control  their  environment. 
In  this  view  liberty  is  the  name  we  give 
to  measures  by  which  we  protect  and  in- 
crease the  veracity  of  the  information 
upon  which  we  act. 


68 


LIBERTY  AND  THE  NEWS 

THE  debates  about  liberty  have 
hitherto  all  been  attempts  to  de- 
termine just  when  in  the  series  from 
Right  to  Left  the  censorship  should  in- 
tervene. In  the  preceding  paper  I  ven- 
tured to  ask  whether  these  attempts  do 
not  turn  on  a  misconception  of  the  prob- 
lem. The  conclusion  reached  was  that, 
in  dealing  with  liberty  of  opinion,  we 
were  dealing  with  a  subsidiary  phase  of 
the  whole  matter;  that,  so  long  as  we 
were  content  to  argue  about  the  privi- 
leges and  immunities  of  opinion,  we  were 
missing  the  point  and  trying  to  make 
bricks  without  straw.  We  should  never 
succeed  even  in  fixing  a  standard  of  tol- 
erance for  opinions,  if  we  concentrated 


Liberty  and  the  News 

all  our  attention  on  the  opinions.  For 
they  are  derived,  not  necessarily  by  rea- 
son, to  be  sure,  but  somehow,  from  the 
stream  of  news  that  reaches  the  public, 
and  the  protection  of  that  stream  is  the 
critical  interest  in  a  modern  state.  In 
going  behind  opinion  to  the  information 
which  it  exploits,  and  in  making  the  val- 
idity of  the  news  our  ideal,  we  shall  be 
fighting  the  battle  where  it  is  really  be- 
ing fought.  We  shall  be  protecting  for 
the  public  interest  that  which  all  the 
special  interests  in  the  world  are  most 
anxious  to  corrupt 

As  the  sources  of  the  news  are  pro- 
tected, as  the  information  they  furnish 
becomes  accessible  and  usable,  as  our 
capacity  to  read  that  information  is  edu- 
cated, the  old  problem  of  tolerance  will 
wear  a  new  aspect.  Many  questions 
which  seem  hopelessly  insoluble  now  will 
cease  to  seem  important  enough  to  be 
70 


Liberty  and  the  News 

worth  solving.  Thus  the  advocates  of  a 
larger  freedom  always  argue  that  true 
opinions  will  prevail  over  error;  their 
opponents  always  claim  that  you  can  fool 
most  of  the  people  most  of  the  time. 
Both  statements  are  true,  but  both  are 
half-truths.  True  opinions  can  prevail 
only  if  the  facts  to  which  they  refer  are 
known;  if  they  are  not  known,  false  ideas 
are  just  as  effective  as  true  ones,  if  not 
a  little  more  effective. 

The  sensible  procedure  in  matters  af- 
fecting the  liberty  of  opinion  would  be 
to  ensure  as  impartial  an  investigation 
of  the  facts  as  is  humanly  possible.  But 
it  is  just  this  investigation  that  is  denied 
us.  It  is  denied  us,  because  we  are  de- 
pendent upon  the  testimony  of  anony- 
mous and  untrained  and  prejudiced  wit- 
nesses; because  the  complexity  of  the 
relevant  facts  is  beyond  the  scope  of  our 
hurried  understanding;  and  finally,  be- 


Liberty  and  the  News 

cause  the  process  we  call  education  fails 
so  lamentably  to  educate  the  sense  of  evi- 
dence or  the  power  of  penetrating  to  the 
controlling  center  of  a  situation.  The 
task  of  liberty,  therefore,  falls  roughly 
under  three  heads,  protection  of  the 
sources  of  the  news,  organization  of  the 
news  so  as  to  make  it  comprehensible, 
and  education  of  human  response. 

We  need,  first,  to  know  what  can  be 
done  with  the  existing  news-structure,  in 
order  to  correct  its  grosser  evils.  How 
far  is  it  useful  to  go  in  fixing  personal 
responsibility  for  the  truthfulness  of 
news?  Much  further,  I  am  inclined  to 
think,  than  we  have  ever  gone.  We 
ought  to  know  the  names  of  the  whole 
staff  of  every  periodical.  While  it  is  not 
necessary,  or  even  desirable,  that  each 
article  should  be  signed,  each  article 
should  be  documented,  and  false  docu- 
mentation should  be  illegal.  An  item  of 
72 


Liberty  and  the  News 

news  should  always  state  whether  it  is 
received  from  one  of  the  great  news- 
agencies,  or  from  a  reporter,  or  from  a 
press  bureau.  Particular  emphasis 
should  be  put  on  marking  news  supplied 
by  press  bureaus,  whether  they  are  lab- 
eled "Geneva,"  or  "Stockholm,"  or  "El 
Paso." 

One  wonders  next  whether  anything 
can  be  devised  to  meet  that  great  evil  of 
the  press,  the  lie  which,  once  under  way, 
can  never  be  tracked  down.  The  more 
scrupulous  papers  will,  of  course,  print 
a  retraction  when  they  have  unintention- 
ally injured  someone;  but  the  retraction 
rarely  compensates  the  victim.  The  law 
of  libel  is  a  clumsy  and  expensive  instru- 
ment, and  rather  useless  to  private  indi- 
viduals or  weak  organizations  because 
of  the  gentlemen's  agreement  which  ob- 
tains in  the  newspaper  world.  After  all, 
the  remedy  for  libel  is  not  money  dam- 
73 


Liberty  and  the  News 

ages,  but  an  undoing  of  the  injury. 
Would  it  be  possible  then  to  establish 
courts  of  honor  in  which  publishers 
should  be  compelled  to  meet  their  ac- 
cusers and,  if  found  guilty  of  misrepre- 
sentation, ordered  to  publish  the  cor- 
rection in  the  particular  form  and  with 
the  prominence  specified  by  the  finding 
of  the  court?  I  do  not  know.  Such 
courts  might  prove  to  be  a  great  nuis- 
ance, consuming  time  and  energy  and  at- 
tention, and  offering  too  free  a  field  for 
individuals  with  a  persecution  mania. 

Perhaps  a  procedure  could  be  devised 
which  would  eliminate  most  of  these  in- 
conveniences. Certainly  it  would  be  a 
great  gain  if  the  accountability  of  pub- 
lishers could  be  increased.  They  exer- 
cise more  power  over  the  individual  than 
is  healthy,  as  everybody  knows  who  has 
watched  the  yellow  press  snooping  at 
keyholes  and  invading  the  privacy  of 
74 


Liberty  and  the  News 

helpless  men  and  women.  Even  more 
important  than  this,  is  the  utterly  reck- 
less power  of  the  press  in  dealing  with 
news  vitally  affecting  the  friendship  of 
peoples.  In  a  Court  of  Honor,  possible 
perhaps  only  in  Utopia,  voluntary  asso- 
ciations working  for  decent  relations 
with  other  peoples  might  hale  the  jingo 
and  the  subtle  propagandist  before  a  tri- 
bunal, to  prove  the  reasonable  truth  of 
his  assertion  or  endure  the  humiliation 
of  publishing  prominently  a  finding 
against  his  character. 

This  whole  subject  is  immensely  diffi- 
cult, and  full  of  traps.  It  would  be  well 
worth  an  intensive  investigation  by  a 
group  of  publishers,  lawyers,  and  stu- 
dents of  public  affairs.  Because  in  some 
form  or  other  the  next  generation  will 
attempt  to  bring  the  publishing  business 
under  greater  social  control.  There  is 
everywhere  an  increasingly  angry  disil- 
75 


Liberty  and  the  News 

lusionment  about  the  press,  a  growing 
sense  of  being  baffled  and  misled;  and 
wise  publishers  will  not  pooh-pooh  these 
omens.  They  might  well  note  the  his- 
tory of  prohibition,  where  a  failure  to 
work  out  a  programme  of  temperance 
brought  about  an  undiscriminating  taboo. 
The  regulation  of  the  publishing  busi- 
ness is  a  subtle  and  elusive  matter,  and 
only  by  an  early  and  sympathetic  effort 
to  deal  with  great  evils  can  the  more  sen- 
sible minds  retain  their  control.  If  pub- 
lishers and  authors  themselves  do  not 
face  the  facts  and  attempt  to  deal  with 
them,  some  day  Congress,  in  a  fit  of  tem- 
per, egged  on  by  an  outraged  public 
opinion,  will  operate  on  the  press  with 
an  ax.  For  somehow  the  community 
must  find  a  way  of  making  the  men  who 
publish  news  accept  responsibility  for  an 
honest  effort  not  to  misrepresent  the 
facts. 


Liberty  and  the  News 

But  the  phrase  "honest  effort"  does  not 
take  us  very  far.  The  problem  here  is 
not  different  from  that  which  we  begin 
dimly  to  apprehend  in  the  field  of  gov- 
ernment and  business  administration. 
The  untrained  amateur  may  mean  well, 
but  he  knows  not  how  to  do  well.  Why 
should  he?  What  are  the  qualifications 
for  being  a  surgeon?  A  certain  mini- 
mum of  special  training.  What  are  the 
qualifications  for  operating  daily  on  the 
brain  and  heart  of  a  nation?  None.  Go 
some  time  and  listen  to  the  average  run 
of  questions  asked  in  interviews  with 
Cabinet  officers — or  anywhere  else. 

I  remember  one  reporter  who  was  de- 
tailed to  the  Peace  Conference  by  a  lead- 
ing news-agency.  He  came  around  every 
day  for  "news."  It  was  a  time  when 
Central  Europe  seemed  to  be  disinte- 
grating, and  great  doubt  existed  as  to 
whether  governments  would  be  found 
77 


Liberty  and  the  News 

with  which  to  sign  a  peace.  But  all  that 
this  "reporter"  wanted  to  know  was 
whether  the  German  fleet,  then  safely  in- 
terned at  Scapa  Flow,  was  going  to  be 
sunk  in  the  North  Sea.  He  insisted 
every  day  on  knowing  that.  For  him  it 
was  the  German  fleet  or  nothing.  Fi- 
nally, he  could  endure  it  no  longer.  So 
he  anticipated  Admiral  Reuther  and  an- 
nounced, in  a  dispatch  to  his  home  pa- 
pers, that  the  fleet  would  be  sunk.  And 
when  I  say  that  a  million  American 
adults  learned  all  that  they  ever  learned 
about  the  Peace  Conference  through  this 
reporter,  I  am  stating  a  very  moderate 
figure. 

He  suggests  the  delicate  question 
raised  by  the  schools  of  journalism:  how 
far  can  we  go  in  turning  newspaper  en- 
terprise from  a  haphazard  trade  into  a 
disciplined  profession?  Quite  far,  I 
imagine,  for  it  is  altogether  unthinkable 

78 


Liberty  and  the  News 

that  a  society  like  ours  should  remain 
forever  dependent  upon  untrained  acci- 
dental witnesses.  It  is  no  answer  to  say 
that  there  have  been  in  the  past,  and  that 
there  are  now,  first-rate  correspondents. 
Of  course  there  are.  Men  like  Brails- 
ford,  Oulahan,  Gibbs,  Lawrence,  Swope, 
Strunsky,  Draper,  Hard,  Dillon,  Lowry, 
Levine,  Ackerman,  Ray  Stannard  Baker, 
Frank  Cobb,  and  William  Allen  White, 
know  their  way  about  in  this  world.  But 
they  are  eminences  on  a  rather  flat  pla- 
teau. The  run  of  the  news  is  handled 
by  men  of  much  smaller  caliber.  It  is 
handled  by  such  men  because  reporting 
is  not  a  dignified  profession  for  which 
men  will  invest  the  time  and  cost  of  an 
education,  but  an  underpaid,  insecure, 
anonymous  form  of  drudgery,  conducted 
on  catch-as-catch-can  principles.  Merely 
to  talk  about  the  reporter  in  terms  of  his 
real  importance  to  civilization  will  make 
79 


Liberty  and  the  News 

newspaper  men  laugh.  Yet  reporting  is 
a  post  of  peculiar  honor.  Observation 
must  precede  every  other  activity,  and 
the  public  observer  (that  is,  the  report- 
er) is  a  man  of  critical  value.  No  amount 
of  money  or  effort  spent  in  fitting  the 
right  men  for  this  work  could  possibly 
be  wasted,  for  the  health  of  society  de- 
pends upon  the  quality  of  the  informa- 
tion it  receives. 

Do  our  schools  of  journalism,  the  few 
we  have,  make  this  kind  of  training  their 
object,  or  are  they  trade-schools  designed 
to  fit  men  for  higher  salaries  in  the  ex- 
isting structure?  I  do  not  presume  to 
answer  the  question,  nor  is  the  answer  of 
great  moment  when  we  remember  how 
small  a  part  these  schools  now  play  in 
actual  journalism.  But  it  is  important 
to  know  whether  it  would  be  worth  while 
to  endow  large  numbers  of  schools  on 
the  model  of  those  now  existing,  and 
80 


Liberty  and  the  News 

make  their  diplomas  a  necessary  condi- 
tion for  the  practice  of  reporting.  It  is 
worth  considering.  Against  the  idea  lies 
the  fact  that  it  is  difficult  to  decide  just 
what  reporting  is — where  in  the  whole 
mass  of  printed  matter  it  begins  and  ends. 
No  one  would  wish  to  set  up  a  closed 
guild  of  reporters  and  thus  exclude  in- 
valuable casual  reporting  and  writing. 
If  there  is  anything  in  the  idea  at  all, 
it  would  apply  only  to  the  routine  serv- 
ice of  the  news  through  large  organiza- 
tions. 

Personally  I  should  distrust  too  much 
ingenuity  of  this  kind,  on  the  ground 
that,  while  it  might  correct  certain  evils, 
the  general  tendency  would  be  to  turn 
the  control  of  the  news  over  to  unenter- 
prising stereotyped  minds  soaked  in  the 
traditions  of  a  journalism  always  ten 
years  out  of  date.  The  better  course  is 
to  avoid  the  deceptive  short  cuts,  and 
81 


Liberty  and  the  News 

make  up  our  minds  to  send  out  into  re- 
porting a  generation  of  men  who  will  by 
sheer  superiority,  drive  the  incompetents 
out  of  business.  That  means  two  things. 
It  means  a  public  recognition  of  the  dig- 
nity of  such  a  career,  so  that  it  will  cease 
to  be  the  refuge  of  the  vaguely  talented. 
With  this  increase  of  prestige  must  go  a 
professional  training  in  journalism  in 
which  the  ideal  of  objective  testimony 
is  cardinal.  The  cynicism  of  the  trade 
needs  to  be  abandoned,  for  the  true  pat- 
terns of  the  journalistic  apprentice  are 
not  the  slick  persons  who  scoop  the  news, 
but  the  patient  and  fearless  men  of  sci- 
ence who  have  labored  to  see  what  the 
world  really  is.  It  does  not  matter  that 
the  news  is  not  susceptible  of  mathemati- 
cal statement.  In  fact,  just  because  news 
is  complex  and  slippery,  good  reporting 
requires  the  exercise  of  the  highest  of  the 
scientific  virtues.  They  are  the  habits  of 
82 


Liberty  and  the  News 

ascribing  no  more  credibility  to  a  state- 
ment than  it  warrants,  a  nice  sense  of  the 
probabilities,  and  a  keen  understanding 
of  the  quantitative  importance  of  partic- 
ular facts.  You  can  judge  the  general 
reliability  of  any  observer  most  easily  by 
the  estimate  he  puts  upon  the  reliability 
of  his  own  report.  If  you  have  no  facts 
of  your  own  with  which  to  check  him, 
the  best  rough  measurement  is  to  wait 
and  see  whether  he  is  aware  of  any  limi- 
tations in  himself;  whether  he  knows  that 
he  saw  only  part  of  the  event  he  de- 
scribes; and  whether  he  has  any  back- 
ground of  knowledge  against  which  he 
can  set  what  he  thinks  he  has  seen. 

This  kind  of  sophistication  is,  of 
course,  necessary  for  the  merest  pretense 
to  any  education.  But  for  different  pro- 
fessions it  needs  to  be  specialized  in  par- 
ticular ways.  A  sound  legal  training  is 
pervaded  by  it,  but  the  skepticism  is 

83 


Liberty  and  the  News 

pointed  to  the  type  of  case  with  which 
the  lawyer  deals.  The  reporter's  work 
is  not  carried  on  under  the  same  condi- 
tions, and  therefore  requires  a  different 
specialization.  How  he  is  to  acquire  it 
is,  of  course,  a  pedagogical  problem  re- 
quiring an  inductive  study  of  the  types 
of  witness  and  the  sources  of  information 
with  whom  the  reporter  is  in  contact. 

Some  time  in  the  future,  when  men 
have  thoroughly  grasped  the  role  of  pub- 
lic opinion  in  society,  scholars  will  not 
hesitate  to  write  treatises  on  evidence  for 
the  use  of  news-gathering  services.  No 
such  treatise  exists  to-day,  because  po- 
litical science  has  suffered  from  that 
curious  prejudice  of  the  scholar  which 
consists  in  regarding  an  irrational  phe- 
nomenon as  not  quite  worthy  of  serious 
study. 

Closely  akin  to  an  education  in  the 
tests  of  credibility  is  rigorous  discipline 


Liberty  and  the  News 

in  the  use  of  words.  It  is  almost  impos- 
sible to  overestimate  the  confusion  in 
daily  life  caused  by  sheer  inability  to 
use  language  with  intention.  We  talk 
scornfully  of  "mere  words."  Yet  through 
words  the  whole  vast  process  of  human 
communication  takes  place.  The  sights 
and  sounds  and  meanings  of  nearly  all 
that  we  deal  with  as  "politics,"  we  learn, 
not  by  our  own  experience,  but  through 
the  words  of  others.  If  those  words  are 
meaningless  lumps  charged  with  emo- 
tion, instead  of  the  messengers  of  fact,  all 
sense  of  evidence  breaks  down.  Just  so 
long  as  big  words  like  Bolshevism, 
Americanism,  patriotism,  pro-German- 
ism, are  used  by  reporters  to  cover  any- 
thing and  anybody  that  the  biggest  fool 
at  large  wishes  to  include,  just  so  long 
shall  we  be  seeking  our  course  through  a 
fog  so  dense  that  we  cannot  tell  whether 
we  fly  upside-down  or  right-side-up.  It 

85 


Liberty  and  the  News 

is  a  measure  of  our  education  as  a  peo- 
ple that  so  many  of  us  are  perfectly  con- 
tent to  live  our  political  lives  in  this 
fraudulent  environment  of  unanalyzed 
words.  For  the  reporter,  abracadabra  is 
fatal.  So  long  as  he  deals  in  it,  he  is 
gullibility  itself,  seeing  nothing  of  the 
world,  and  living,  as  it  were,  in  a  hall 
of  crazy  mirrors. 

Only  the  discipline  of  a  modernized 
logic  can  open  the  door  to  reality.  An 
overwhelming  part  of  the  dispute  about 
"freedom  of  opinion"  turns  on  words 
which  mean  different  things  to  the  cen- 
sor and  the  agitator.  So  long  as  the 
meanings  of  the  words  are  not  disso- 
ciated, the  dispute  will  remain  a  circular 
wrangle.  Education  that  shall  make 
men  masters  of  their  vocabulary  is  one 
of  the  central  interests  of  liberty.  For 

such  an  education  alone  can  transform  the 
86 


Liberty  and  the  News 

dispute   into    debate   from   similar   pre- 
mises. 

A  sense  of  evidence  and  a  power  to 
define  words  must  for  the  modern  re- 
porter be  accompanied  by  a  working 
knowledge  of  the  main  stratifications  and 
currents  of  interest.  Unless  he  knows 
that  "news"  of  society  almost  always 
starts  from  a  special  group,  he  is  doomed 
to  report  the  surface  of  events.  He  will 
report  the  ripples  of  a  passing  steamer, 
and  forget  the  tides  and  the  currents  and 
the  ground-swell.  He  will  report  what 
Kolchak  or  Lenin  says,  and  see  what 
they  do  only  when  it  confirms  what  he 
thinks  they  said.  He  will  deal  with  the 
flicker  of  events  and  not  with  their  mo- 
tive. There  are  ways  of  reading  that 
flicker  so  as  to  discern  the  motive,  but 
they  have  not  been  formulated  in  the 
light  of  recent  knowledge.  Here  is  big 
work  for  the  student  of  politics.  The 

87 


Liberty  and  the  News 

good  reporter  reads  events  with  an  in- 
tuition trained  by  wide  personal  experi- 
ence. The  poor  reporter  cannot  read 
them,  because  he  is  not  even  aware  that 
there  is  anything  in  particular  to  read. 

And  then  the  reporter  needs  a  general 
sense  of  what  the  world  is  doing.  Em- 
phatically he  ought  not  to  be  serving  a 
cause,  no  matter  how  good.  In  his  pro- 
fessional activity  it  is  no  business  of  his 
to  care  whose  ox  is  gored.  To  be  sure, 
when  so  much  reporting  is  ex  parte,  and 
hostile  to  insurgent  forces,  the  insurgents 
in  self-defense  send  out  ex  parte  report- 
ers of  their  own.  But  a  community  can- 
not rest  content  to  learn  the  truth  about 
the  Democrats  by  reading  the  Repub- 
lican papers,  and  the  truth  about  the  Re- 
publicans by  reading  the  Democratic  pa- 
pers. There  is  room,  and  there  is  need, 
for  disinterested  reporting;  and  if  this 
sounds  like  a  counsel  of  perfection  now, 


Liberty  and  the  News 

it  is  only  because  the  science  of  public 
opinion  is  still  at  the  point  where  as- 
tronomy was  when  theological  interests 
proclaimed  the  conclusions  that  all  re- 
search must  vindicate. 

While  the  reporter  will  serve  no  cause, 
he  will  possess  a  steady  sense  that  the 
chief  purpose  of  "news"  is  to  enable 
mankind  to  live  successfully  toward  the 
future.  He  will  know  that  the  world 
is  a  process,  not  by  any  means  always 
onward  and  upward,  but  never  quite  the 
same.  As  the  observer  of  the  signs  of 
change,  his  value  to  society  depends  upon 
the  prophetic  discrimination  with  which 
he  selects  those  signs. 

But  the  news  from  which  he  must  pick 
and  choose  has  long  since  become  too 
complicated  even  for  the  most  highly 
trained  reporter.  The  work,  say,  of  the 
government  is  really  a  small  part  of  the 
day's  news,  yet  even  the  wealthiest  and 


Liberty  and  the  News 

most  resourceful  newspapers  fail  in  their 
efforts  to  report  "Washington."  The 
high  lights  and  the  disputes  and  sensa- 
tional incidents  are  noted,  but  no  one  can 
keep  himself  informed  about  his  Con- 
gressman or  about  the  individual  depart- 
ments, by  reading  the  daily  press.  This 
failure  in  no  way  reflects  on  the  news- 
papers. It  results  from  the  intricacy  and 
unwieldiness  of  the  subject-matter. 
Thus,  it  is  easier  to  report  Congress  than 
it  is  to  report  the  departments,  because 
the  work  of  Congress  crystallizes  crudely 
every  so  often  in  a  roll-call.  But  ad- 
ministration, although  it  has  become 
more  important  than  legislation,  is  hard 
to  follow,  because  its  results  are  spread 
over  a  longer  period  of  time,  and  its  ef- 
fects are  felt  in  ways  that  no  reporter 
can  really  measure. 

Theoretically   Congress   is   competent 
to  act  as  the  critical  eye  on  administra- 
90 


Liberty  and  the  News 

tion.  Actually,  the  investigations  of 
Congress  are  almost  always  planless 
raids,  conducted  by  men  too  busy  and 
too  little  informed  to  do  more  than  catch 
the  grosser  evils,  or  intrude  upon  good 
work  that  is  not  understood.  It  was  a 
recognition  of  these  difficulties  that  was 
the  cause  of  two  very  interesting  experi- 
ments in  late  years.  One  was  the  estab- 
lishment of  more  or  less  semi-official  in- 
stitutes of  government  research;  the 
other,  the  growth  of  specialized  private 
agencies  which  attempt  to  give  tech- 
nical summaries  of  the  work  of  various 
branches  of  the  government.  Neither 
experiment  has  created  much  commo- 
tion: yet  together  they  illustrate  an  idea 
which,  properly  developed,  will  be  in- 
creasingly valuable  to  an  enlightened 
public  opinion. 

Their  principle  is  simple.     They  are 
expert  organized  reporters.     Having  no 


Liberty  and  the  News 

horror  of  dullness,  no  interest  in  being 
dramatic,  they  can  study  statistics  and 
orders  and  reports  which  are  beyond  the 
digestive  powers  of  a  newspaper  man  or 
of  his  readers.  The  lines  of  their  growth 
would  seem  to  be  threefold:  to  make  a 
current  record,  to  make  a  running  analy- 
sis of  it,  and  on  the  basis  of  both,  to  sug- 
gest plans. 

Record  and  analysis  require  an  ex- 
perimental formulation  of  standards  by 
which  the  work  of  government  can  be 
tested.  Such  standards  are  not  to  be 
evolved  off-hand  out  of  anyone's  con- 
sciousness. Some  have  already  been 
worked  out  experimentally,  others  still 
need  to  be  discovered;  all  need  to  be  re- 
fined and  brought  into  perspective  by 
the  wisdom  of  experience.  Carried  out 
competently,  the  public  would  gradually 
learn  to  substitute  objective  criteria  for 
gossip  and  intuitions.  One  can  imagine 
92 


Liberty  and  the  News 

a  public-health  service  subjected  to  such 
expert  criticism.  The  institute  of  re- 
search publishes  the  death-rate  as  a 
whole  for  a  period  of  years.  It  seems 
that  for  a  particular  season  the  rate  is 
bad  in  certain  maladies,  that  in  others 
the  rate  of  improvement  is  not  suffi- 
ciently rapid.  These  facts  are  compared 
with  the  expenditures  of  the  service, 
and  with  the  main  lines  of  its  activity. 
Are  the  bad  results  due  to  the  causes 
beyond  the  control  of  the  service?  do 
they  indicate  a  lack  of  foresight  in  ask- 
ing appropriations  for  special  work?  or 
in  the  absence  of  novel  phenomena,  do 
they  point  to  a  decline  of  the  personnel, 
or  in  its  morale?  If  the  latter,  further 
analysis  may  reveal  that  salaries  are  too 
low  to  attract  men  of  ability,  or  that 
the  head  of  the  service  by  bad  manage- 
ment has  weakened  the  interest  of  his 
staff. 

93 


Liberty  and  the  News 

When  the  work  of  government  is  ana- 
lyzed in  some  such  way  as  this,  the  re- 
porter deals  with  a  body  of  knowledge 
that  has  been  organized  for  his  appre- 
hension. In  other  words,  he  is  able  to 
report  the  "news,"  because  between  him 
and  the  raw  material  of  government 
there  has  been  interposed  a  more  or 
less  expert  political  intelligence.  He 
ceases  to  be  the  ant,  described  by  Wil- 
liam James,  whose  view  of  a  building 
was  obtained  by  crawling  over  the  cracks 
in  the  walls. 

These  political  observatories  will,  I 
think,  be  found  useful  in  all  branches 
of  government,  national,  state,  munici- 
pal, industrial,  and  even  in  foreign  af- 
fairs. They  should  be  clearly  out  of 
reach  either  of  the  wrath  or  of  the  favor 
of  the  office-holders.  They  must,  of 
course,  be  endowed,  but  the  endowment 
should  be  beyond  the  immediate  control 
94 


Liberty  and  the  News 

of  the  legislature  and  of  the  rich  patron. 
Their  independence  can  be  partially 
protected  by  the  terms  of  the  trust;  the 
rest  must  be  defended  by  the  ability  of 
the  institute  to  make  itself  so  much  the 
master  of  the  facts  as  to  be  impregnably 
based  on  popular  confidence. 

One  would  like  to  think  that  the  uni- 
versities could  be  brought  into  such  a 
scheme.  Were  they  in  close  contact  with 
the  current  record  and  analysis,  there 
might  well  be  a  genuine  "field  work"  in 
political  science  for  the  students;  and 
there  could  be  no  better  directing  idea 
for  their  more  advanced  researches  than 
the  formulation  of  the  intellectual 
methods  by  which  the  experience  of 
government  could  be  brought  to  usable 
control.  After  all,  the  purpose  of  study- 
ing "political  science"  is  to  be  able  to  act 
more  effectively  in  politics,  the  word 
effectively  being  understood  in  the  largest 
95 


Liberty  and  the  News 

and,  therefore,  the  ideal  sense.  In  the 
universities  men  should  be  able  to  think 
patiently  and  generously  for  the  good  of 
society.  If  they  do  not,  surely  one  of 
the  reasons  is  that  thought  terminates  in 
doctor's  theses  and  brown  quarterlies, 
and  not  in  the  critical  issues  of  politics. 
On  first  thought,  all  this  may  seem 
rather  a  curious  direction  for  an  inquiry 
into  the  substance  of  liberty.  Yet  we 
have  always  known,  as  a  matter  of  com- 
mon sense,  that  there  was  an  intimate 
connection  between  "liberty"  and  the  use 
of  liberty.  Every  one  who  has  examined 
the  subject  at  all  has  had  to  conclude 
that  tolerance  per  se  is  an  arbitrary  line, 
and  that,  in  practice,  the  determining 
factor  is  the  significance  of  the  opinion  to 
be  tolerated.  This  study  is  based  on  an 
avowal  of  that  fact.  Once  it  is  avowed, 
there  seems  to  be  no  way  of  evading  the 
conclusion  that  liberty  is  not  so  much 


Liberty  and  the  News 

permission  as  it  is  the  construction  of  a 
system  of  information  increasingly  inde- 
pendent of  opinion.  In  the  long  run  it 
looks  as  if  opinion  could  be  made  at 
once  free  and  enlightening  only  by  trans- 
ferring our  interest  from  "opinion"  to  the 
objective  realities  from  which  it  springs. 
This  thought  has  led  us  to  speculations 
on  ways  of  protecting  and  organizing 
the  stream  of  news  as  the  source  of  all 
opinion  that  matters.  Obviously  these 
speculations  do  not  pretend  to  offer  a 
fully  considered  or  a  completed  scheme. 
Their  nature  forbids  it,  and  I  should  be 
guilty  of  the  very  opinionativeness  I 
have  condemned,  did  these  essays  claim 
to  be  anything  more  than  tentative  in- 
dications of  the  more  important  phases 
of  the  problem. 

Yet  I  can  well  imagine  their  causing 
a  considerable  restlessness  in  the  minds 
of  some  readers.     Standards,   institutes, 
97 


Liberty  and  the  News 

university  research,  schools  of  journal- 
ism, they  will  argue,  may  be  all  right, 
but  they  are  a  gray  business  in  a  vivid 
world.  They  blunt  the  edge  of  life;  they 
leave  out  of  account  the  finely  irrespon- 
sible opinion  thrown  out  by  the  creative 
mind;  they  do  not  protect  the  indispens- 
able novelty  from  philistinism  and  op- 
pression. These  proposals  of  yours,  they 
will  say,  ignore  the  fact  that  such  an  ap- 
paratus of  knowledge  will  in  the  main 
be  controlled  by  the  complacent  and  the 
traditional,  and  the  execution  will  inevit- 
ably be  illiberal. 

There  is  force  in  the  indictment. 
And  yet  I  am  convinced  that  we  shall 
accomplish  more  by  fighting  for  truth 
than  by  fighting  for  our  theories.  It  is  a 
better  loyalty.  It  is  a  humbler  one,  but 
it  is  also  more  irresistible.  Above  all  it 
is  educative.  For  the  real  enemy  is  ig- 
norance, from  which  all  of  us,  conserva- 


Liberty  and  the  News 

live,  liberal,  and  revolutionary,  suffer. 
If  our  effort  is  concentrated  on  our  de- 
sires,— be  it  our  desire  to  have  and  to 
hold  what  is  good,  our  desire  to  remake 
peacefully,  or  our  desire  to  transform 
suddenly, — we  shall  divide  hopelessly 
and  irretrievably.  We  must  go  back  of 
our  opinions  to  the  neutral  facts  for  unity 
and  refreshment  of  spirit.  To  deny  this, 
it  seems  to  me,  is  to  claim  that  the  mass 
of  men  is  impervious  to  education,  and 
to  deny  that,  is  to  deny  the  postulate  of 
democracy,  and  to  seek  salvation  in  a 
dictatorship.  There  is,  I  am  convinced, 
nothing  but  misery  and  confusion  that 
way.  But  I  am  equally  convinced  that 
democracy  will  degenerate  into  this  dic- 
tatorship either  of  the  Right  or  of  the 
Left,  if  it  does  not  become  genuinely 
self-governing.  That  means,  in  terms  of 
public  opinion,  a  resumption  of  that  con- 
tact between  beliefs  and  realities  which 
99 


Liberty  and  the  News 

we  have  been  losing  steadily  since  the 
small-town  democracy  was  absorbed  into 
the  Great  Society. 

The  administration  of  public  infor- 
mation toward  greater  accuracy  and  more 
successful  analysis  is  the  highway  of 
liberty.  It  is,  I  believe,  a  matter  of  first- 
rate  importance  that  we  should  fix  this 
in  our  minds.  Having  done  so,  we  may 
be  able  to  deal  more  effectively  with  the 
traps  and  the  lies  and  the  special  interests 
which  obstruct  the  road  and  drive  us 
astray.  Without  a  clear  conception  of 
what  the  means  of  liberty  are,  the 
struggle  for  free  speech  and  free  opinion 
easily  degenerates  into  a  mere  contest  of 
opinion. 

But  realization  is  not  the  last  step, 
though  it  is  the  first.  We  need  be  under 
no  illusion  that  the  stream  of  news  can 
be  purified  simply  by  pointing  out  the 
value  of  purity.  The  existing  news-struc- 
100 


Liberty  and  the  News 

ture  may  be  made  serviceable  to  democ- 
racy along  the  general  lines  suggested, 
by  the  training  of  the  journalist,  and  by 
the  development  of  expert  record  and 
analysis.  But  while  it  may  be,  it  will  not 
be,  simply  by  saying  that  it  ought  to  be. 
Those  who  are  now  in  control  have  too 
much  at  stake,  and  they  control  the  source 
of  reform  itself. 

Change  will  come  only  by  the  drastic 
competition  of  those  whose  interests  are 
not  represented  in  the  existing  news- 
organization.  It  will  come  only  if  or- 
ganized labor  and  militant  liberalism  set 
a  pace  which  cannot  be  ignored.  Our 
sanity  and,  therefore,  our  safety  depend 
upon  this  competition,  upon  fearless  and 
relentless  exposure  conducted  by  self- 
conscious  groups  that  are  now  in  a  min- 
ority. It  is  for  these  groups  to  under- 
stand that  the  satisfaction  of  advertising 
a  pet  theory  is  as  nothing  compared  to 
101 


Liberty  and  the  News 

the  publication  of  the  news.  And  having 
realized  it,  it  is  for  them  to  combine 
their  resources  and  their  talent  for  the 
development  of  an  authentic  news-service 
which  is  invincible  because  it  supplies 
what  the  community  is  begging  for  and 
cannot  get. 

All  the  gallant  little  sheets  expressing 
particular  programmes  are  at  bottom 
vanity,  and  in  the  end,  futility,  so  long 
as  the  reporting  of  daily  news  is  left  in 
untrained  and  biased  hands.  If  we  are 
to  move  ahead,  we  must  see  a  great  in- 
dependent journalism,  setting  standards 
for  commercial  journalism,  like  those 
which  the  splendid  English  cooperative 
societies  are  setting  for  commercial  busi- 
ness. An  enormous  amount  of  money  is 
dribbled  away  in  one  fashion  or  another 
on  little  papers,  mass-meetings,  and  what 
not.  If  only  some  considerable  portion 
of  it  could  be  set  aside  to  establish  a 
1 02 


Liberty  and  the  News 

central  international  news-agency,  we 
should  make  progress.  We  cannot  fight 
the  untruth  which  envelops  us  by  parad- 
ing our  opinions.  We  can  do  it  only  by 
reporting  the  facts,  and  we  do  not  de- 
serve to  win  if  the  facts  are  against  us. 

The  country  is  spotted  with  benevo- 
lent foundations  of  one  kind  or  another, 
many  of  them  doing  nothing  but  pay 
the  upkeep  of  fine  buildings  and  sine- 
cures. Organized  labor  spends  large 
sums  of  money  on  politics  and  strikes 
which  fail  because  it  is  impossible  to  se- 
cure a  genuine  hearing  in  public  opinion. 
Could  there  be  a  pooling  of  money  for 
a  news-agency?  Not,  I  imagine,  if  its 
object  were  to  further  a  cause.  But  sup- 
pose the  plan  were  for  a  news-service  in 
which  editorial  matter  was  rigorously 
excluded,  and  the  work  was  done  by  men 

who  had  already  won  the  confidence  of 
103 


Liberty  and  the  News 

the  public  by  their  independence?    Then, 
perhaps. 

At  any  rate,  our  salvation  lies  in  two 
things:  ultimately,  in  the  infusion  of  the 
news-structure  by  men  with  a  new 
training  and  outlook;  immediately,  in 
the  concentration  of  the  independent 
forces  against  the  complacency  and  bad 
service  of  the  routineers.  We  shall  ad- 
vance when  we  have  learned  humility; 
when  we  have  learned  to  seek  the  truth, 
to  reveal  it  and  publish  it;  when  we 
care  more  for  that  than  for  the  privi- 
lege of  arguing  about  ideas  in  a  fog  of 
uncertainty. 


104 


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